Biblioteca Salaborsa, Public library in Palazzo d'Accursio, Bologna, Italy.
Biblioteca Salaborsa occupies the northern section of Palazzo d'Accursio, a Renaissance building next to Piazza del Nettuno in central Bologna. The space spreads across multiple floors with reading areas, book collections, and digital resources for public use.
The library opened in 2001 after former municipal offices in the palazzo were converted to public use while preserving the building's original architectural features. This transformation turned the palace into a modern public space, ending its role as the city's administrative center.
The name comes from the Sala Borsa, the hall that housed the city's stock exchange and later municipal offices before becoming a library in 2001. Today the covered piazza at its centre hosts conferences and exhibitions, and the children's section, Salaborsa Ragazzi, houses the Italian branch of IBBY, the international organisation linking books with young readers.
The library occupies 12,000 square metres in the northern part of Palazzo d'Accursio, entered from Piazza del Nettuno just north of Piazza Maggiore. The glass floor over the archaeological site is in the central covered piazza, and the ruins can also be reached from the basement, where information panels explain them. The building is a public library with free entry.
The glass floor of the central covered piazza looks onto the buried city of Bononia, founded in 189 BC, and the ruins also hold Etruscan layers older than the Roman ones. The basement level, reached from inside the library, carries information panels on the excavated remains.
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