University Library of Genoa, Public conservation library in Via Balbi, Genoa, Italy.
The University Library of Genoa holds over 600,000 items, including volumes, pamphlets, manuscripts, incunabula, 16th-century books, autographs and periodicals. Since September 2013 most of the collection has been housed in the former Hotel Colombia at Via Balbi 40, while the historic seat at Via Balbi 3 closed in July 2014. Its 34 rooms include the Terza Sala, which retains the Jesuit library's monumental walnut-root shelving.
The building grew from a Jesuit school in the early 1600s that started a library collection in 1604. It became a public university library when Genoa modernized its higher education system in the late 1700s.
The library holds the legal deposit for Liguria, so it receives copies of works printed in the region. Its shelves preserve the libraries of Jesuit colleges and of religious houses suppressed in the 18th and 19th centuries, which explains the large theological and religious section. The monumental "Terza Sala" still has its mid-17th-century walnut-root shelving.
The library sits in the city center and is easy to reach by public transit. Visitors should check opening hours before arriving to make sure they can access the areas they need.
The 2013 move was not a modernization but a transfer: most of the collection left the historic Via Balbi 3 building for the former Hotel Colombia Excelsior at Via Balbi 40, acquired by MiBact at the end of the century, and the old seat closed on 25 July 2014. The ex-church seat inaugurated in December 1935 had split its nave horizontally to hold a four-storey metal bookstack below and the reading room above.
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