Biblioteca provinciale Salvatore Tommasi, Conservation library in L'Aquila, Italy.
Biblioteca provinciale Salvatore Tommasi, known as the Tommasiana, is a public library founded in 1848. Its historic rooms occupied the Palazzo del Convitto, L'Aquila's first porticoed building, between Corso Vittorio Emanuele and Piazza Palazzo; after the 2009 earthquake the library moved to a modern building in the Bazzano industrial area. It holds about 260,000 volumes, 2,289 periodicals, 3,500 sixteenth-century editions, 31 choral books and 131 incunabula.
The library's origins lie in the 1814 founding of the Reale Liceo degli Abruzzi in the Franciscan convent on Piazza del Palazzo, and in the 1822 transfer of the Badia Celestiniana of Sulmona's books to the Jesuits of L'Aquila. It opened in 1848, was disputed with the Jesuits for over twenty years, and became fully autonomous in 1872. Enriched by books from suppressed religious orders, it grew into the second archive of the Kingdom after Naples.
The library's name honours Salvatore Tommasi, a professor of clinical medicine at the University of Naples, to whom the new premises were dedicated at their 1883 inauguration. Its collections include the complete Annales of the L'Aquila historian Anton Ludovico Antinori, 31 choral books and 131 incunabula, among them the first two books printed in the city by Adamo da Rottweil.
Since the 2009 earthquake the library has operated from a temporary site in the Nucleo Industriale di Bazzano, shared with the State Archive and the University of L'Aquila's Faculty of Letters and Philosophy. The historic rooms in Palazzo del Convitto, between Corso Vittorio Emanuele and Piazza Palazzo, were declared unfit and lie in an access-restricted zone. The catalogue has been online since the library joined the national library system in 1993, so holdings can be checked before travelling.
Among the library's holdings are 131 incunabula, including the first two books printed in L'Aquila by Adamo da Rottweil, plus 31 choral books and 3,500 sixteenth-century editions. The manuscript collection preserves the complete Annales of the L'Aquila historian Anton Ludovico Antinori.
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