The University Library

The library of the Studio of Padova, established in 1629 by the Venetian Republic and established in the Jesuit convent in the Pontecorvo area, is the oldest of the Italian university libraries. To guarantee its growth, there was the obligation to deposit a copy of what was printed in the territory of the Venetian Republic.

In 1631 it was transferred to the Sala dei Giganti and over time it acquired some private libraries of the teachers, including those of the jurist Bartolomeo Selvatico (1631), the mathematician Bartolomeo Sovero (1632), and the physician Giacomo Zabarella (1646). In addition, in 1773 the 5,000 volumes of the library of the anatomist Giambattista Morgagni, who had died two years earlier, were purchased and the library of the naturalist Antonio Vallisneri merged into it.

Following the Napoleonic suppression of religious corporations, a large number of manuscripts, incunabula and printed books from the libraries of dozens and dozens of monasteries were confiscated. The book heritage was also enriched by the library of the Natio Germanica, the gifts of the Botanical Garden, Canestrini, Musatti, the Morpurgo collection, the former library of the military garrison and the fund consisting of the papers of the philosopher Roberto Ardigò, lecturer at the University of Padua.

In 1912 the library left the campus of the Sala dei Giganti, which had become completely insufficient, to occupy what is now the campus in Via San Biagio, in Padova: a state-owned building that was the first built in Italy with modern criteria specifically for library use, designed by the engineer Giordano Tomasatti.

The shelves, sculpted by the Flemish cabinetmaker Michele Bertens between 1698 and 1704 and inherited from the library of the monastery of Santa Giustina, were brought to Palazzo Bo where, in the thirties, they found their campuses in the Hall of the College of Professors, now the Ancient Archive, and in the Sala Baldo degli Ubaldi of the School of Law.

The patrimony of the university library also includes the manuscript of St. Augustine's De civitate Dei , which belonged to Bishop Ildebrandino Conti, which presents a couplet composed by Petrarch and written in his own hand. 
Among the editions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the works of medicine and astronomy and the first folio of Shakespeare, the complete works printed posthumously in London in 1623, are of great importance.