The watercolour paintings

The Archiginnasio in 1849

The Bolognese decorative painters Contardo Tomaselli and Onofrio Zanotti made a series of ten watercolour paintings that reproduce various views of the outside and the inside of the building, after the opening of the Library to the public. They offer an important example of the appearance and of the use of the halls at that time.
The accurate and detailed execution describes with an almost photographic effect all the particularities of the palace and of its first readers and visitors, elegantly dressed in tune with the monumentality and the noble origins of the place.

1. The front door of the palace
2. The inner courtyard, seen from the first floor
3. View of the Reading Room of the Library located in Room 5
4. The Room a Tramontana (the former auditorium of the Artists and the current Reading Room of the Library) with the bust of Pope Pius IX, the reigning Pope in 1849.
5. The upper arcaded loggia
6. The Anatomical Theatre
7. The inner courtyard seen from the staircases of the Legisti