Casa Carducci: the house-library-archive and house museum

Abstract

The centenary history of Casa Carducci is briefly retraced with the aim of focusing on the completely original physiognomy of the institute owned by the Municipality of Bologna, opened to the public in 1921. Casa Carducci offers in fact, in the dual structure of library-archive and house museum, thanks to the faithful reconstruction of the Archiginnasio Librarian - Albano Sorbelli - an extraordinary example of unity and integrity of documentary collections (books, manuscripts, epistolary papers...) and museum collections (furniture, furnishings of various kinds...) which he has not found for many years in the Italian cultural panorama. A unique model, at least until, only in the second half of the twentieth century, other containers with multiple contents linked to protagonists of our literary writing were destined for public use. Among the cultural assets that have reached public enjoyment intact, we remember d'Annunzio's Vittoriale, Casa Pascoli in Castelvecchio di Barga, Casa Moretti in Cesenatico, Palazzo Leopardi in Recanati, Casa Pirandello and Casa Moravia in Rome. These illustrious homes are above all 'forges' for us, according to an expression dear to Giosue Carducci, if it is true that the documents kept in their library-archives, anything but silent and immobile witnesses of a past time, continue to live on in our explorations and research on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.