Descrizione

The Mediterranean has always been the unifying element, for good and bad, of the people that live on its shores, and today, more than eveer before, it is a sometimes unconscious if not indifferent spectator of the hopes of the men and women who cross it in order to escape war and poverty or just in serach of a better future.

It is not simple to define and explain what this sea is and what it represents over and above its status as a geographic entity.

It has been, and continues to be, a place exchange, a theatre of war and raiding, a grave for the shipwrecked, a trading route of precious and sought-after goods.

It is almost a liquid piazza of an immense country formed by the three continents that give on to it.

Sensitive to the theme, the Riccardiana Library was plased to host the inaugural conference of the COST Action PIMo, whose focus of research is the Mediterranean, and, more specifically, the movement of people, ideas and things across its waters.

What is more, the Library was proud to offer readers and the city at large an exhibition on this theme, or rather, trough its collections, an authentic voyage across the Mediterranean.

The curators José Marìa Pérez Fernàndez and Giovanni Tarantino, with the assistance of Teresa Sansone and Rossella Giovannetti, examined and explored the library, which once again yielded up innumerable stories.

Divided into twelve thematic sectins, the exibition, and this volume that illustrates it, recount the Mediterranean and its peoples with the objects that accompanied them, displaying a wide selection of manuscript – from the celebrated Virgilio Riccardiano to the account of the vicissitudes of Erasmo Magno da Velletri – and marvellus illustrated books in print.

Francesca Gallori

Director of the Biblioteca Riccardiana