Biblioteca Mozzi-Borgetti
On the edge of Piazza Vittorio Veneto, a doorway leads into a different century. The Biblioteca Mozzi-Borgetti occupies the former Jesuit college of Macerata, a building that once housed the young Matteo Ricci before his journey to China. When Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus in 1773, the town fought for the premises and won.
The library opened to the public in 1787, its nucleus the Jesuits' own 5,000 volumes. Generous donors soon followed: the lawyer Francesco Mornati, the brothers Bartolomeo and Giuseppe Mozzi, and the Dominican Tommaso Borgetti. Borgetti's collection was kept separate until his death in 1855, when it merged with the Mozzi bequest to form a single institution.
Step into the Sala degli Specchi and the room itself becomes a book. The walls and ceiling are covered in 18th-century grotteschi by Vincenzo Martini, Domenico Marzapani and Domenico Cervini. This is where you come to read, to study, to sit with the weight of 350,000 volumes, 10,000 manuscripts, and the great photographic archive that documents the life of the Marche.
The library is not a museum. It is a living archive, used daily by scholars and locals. The 20,000-volume Castiglioni collection, once owned by Pope Pius VIII, sits beside the papers of poets, historians and architects. To visit is to walk into a conversation that began in the 18th century and has never stopped.
In 1773, when Pope Clement XIV dissolved the Jesuit order, the small city of Macerata saw an opportunity. The Jesuit college, with its rich library of 5,000 volumes, stood empty. Cardinal Guglielmo Pallotta and Cardinal Mario Compagnoni Marefoschi, both natives of the city, interceded with the pope. By December, the building was granted to the comune for use as a university and a public library. Pope Pius VI later provided a subsidy.
The library opened on 31 March 1787. Its first official librarian, Domenico Troili, had honed his skills at the Estense Library in Modena. The collection grew quickly thanks to donations. The lawyer Francesco Mornati left his books. Then came the Mozzi brothers – Bartolomeo and Giuseppe – who added not only volumes but also a financial endowment, with conditions to ensure public access. Bartolomeo Mozzi helped transform an assembly of books into a true bibliographic institute.
In 1833, the Dominican Tommaso Borgetti donated his library. For a time it was called the ‘Borgettiana’, administered separately from the ‘Mozziana’. Only after Borgetti’s death in 1855 did the two collections merge. Meanwhile, the art historian Amico Ricci gave his library and working notes. After Italian unification, suppressed convents contributed another 19,000 volumes.
The library survived the Napoleonic upheavals. The University was suppressed and the building briefly exchanged for a former Barnabite convent, but in 1814 a decree by Joachim Murat, then King of Naples, returned the Jesuit college to the city free of charge. The library stayed.
In 1935, one of the most important acquisitions: the 20,000-volume library of the Castiglioni family of Cingoli, which included books belonging to Pope Pius VIII. Over the next decades, the archives of the historian Ireneo Aleandri, the poet Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, and the composer Giuseppe Radiciotti found their way here. The library also holds manuscripts by Abate Colucci, author of the Antichità Picene, and books from the personal library of Massimo D'Azeglio.
Today the library holds more than 350,000 volumes, including over 10,000 manuscripts, 300 incunabula, and 4,000 16th-century editions. The photographic archive, established in the 1970s, contains over 37,000 images and 56,000 glass negatives, a visual chronicle of the region’s events, architecture and daily life.
The Sala degli Specchi is the crowning space. Painted in the 18th century by Vincenzo Martini, Domenico Marzapani and Domenico Cervini, its grotteschi frescoes cover every surface. The room is used for reading and exhibitions, and its mirrors reflect the light of the square outside.
To enter the Biblioteca Mozzi-Borgetti is to understand how a small city built a repository of European significance. Not through grand gestures, but through a steady accumulation of gifts, legacies and the quiet persistence of its citizens.
