The wall decorations of the Archiginnasio Palace are basically of two types: the students’ coats of arms and the memorials, that are about 140 decorations dedicated to the professors of the Bolognese Studio. The memorial dedicated to Giovanni Girolamo Sbaraglia. Sbaraglia held the chair of Anatomy and Medicine and he diedRead More →
The Teriaca was an antidote used since ancient times against the bite of snakes: its most famous formulation goes back to the physician Galen who lived in the 2nd century AD. In the Middle Ages the Teriaca was considered a cure-all and its prescription became a matter of fundamental debate forRead More →
Here we can see the prior of the students showing the snow to the Cardinal Legate. The priors of the two Universities of Legisti and Artists displayed the first snow that fell every year to the city authorities and to every lecturer of the Studio, so as to receive money.Read More →
Il tuo browser non supporta l’audio gestito con HTML5. On the 29th January 1944, at ten to one, the long sound of a siren informed the Bolognese that the air raid which had begun at half past eleven had ended. Hundreds of people, including librarians, readers and passers-by who wantedRead More →
The doctor in the north-eastern corner is holding an object: it is a nose. The figure depicted is a physician of the sixteenth century, Gaspare Tagliacozzi (1545 – 1599, Bologna), a pupil of Aranzio who, in 1570, started his career as a professor of anatomy at the Bolognese Studio, afterRead More →
Muratori’s memorial The only monument of the Archiginnasio that was realised by a female artist is Muratory’s memorial, which is located on the southern wall of the upper arcaded loggia. It was heavily damaged by the bombing of the 29th January 1944 and, also, by the subsequent restoration, because of aRead More →
Among the thousands of coats of arms, twenty-three are those with the image of the unicorn.Read More →
“In 1842 G. Rossini’s Stabat Mater was performed at the Archiginnasio of Bologna, and it was the first time that it was performed in Italy. Rossini himself, who lived in Bologna, wanted that performance for charity purposes, that is to create a fund of subsidies for Bolognese musicians who livedRead More →
The “chronogram” is a phrase or a verse in which some letters, corresponding to Roman numerals (larger than the whole context), indicate the date of the event to which the phrase or the verse refers. In the case of the memorial known as “Madonna degli Scolari”, the inscription refers toRead More →
This is a fresco in honour of Cardinal Benedetto Giustiniani, dedicated to him by Diego de Leon Garavito, a Spanish student born in Lima in Perù, and he is considered the first “American” student who attended the University of Bologna, for whom the “natio Indiarum” was added to the legislatureRead More →
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 exampleRead More →
In the upper arcaded loggia, in the first arcade of the artists’ ambulatory, there are the Insignia of the Republic of Venice and the coat of arms of Prior Valmarana. The haloed lion of St. Mark keeps the Gospel open, bearing the writing “pax tibi Marce Evangelista meus”. The lionRead More →
Besides the two bells that beat the hours in the small tower which is positioned above the clock, there is another bell in the courtyard of the Archiginnasio: it is placed in a corner, between the north and the west walls, almost at the top of the first floor. AccordingRead More →
This miniature, which belongs to the State archive of Bologna, depicts the first public lecture held by Laura Bassi on the 18th December 1732, in the Palace of the Archiginnasio. The lecture was held in the auditorium of the Artists, now the Reading Room of the Library, which appears hereRead More →
