{"id":6780,"date":"2018-01-03T17:15:29","date_gmt":"2018-01-03T16:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rivieradeifiori.info\/2018\/01\/03\/the-aprosiana-of-ventimiglia\/"},"modified":"2018-01-03T19:11:38","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T18:11:38","slug":"the-aprosiana-of-ventimiglia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rivieradeifiori.it\/en\/art-and-culture\/the-aprosiana-of-ventimiglia\/","title":{"rendered":"The Aprosiana of Ventimiglia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The treasure of the first public library of Liguria<\/strong><\/p>\n

Almost 7,000 volumes ranging from 150 incunabula to books of the Sixth and Seventh centuries: this is the precious heritage of the Aprosiana Civic Library of Ventimiglia, a treasure preserved over centuries and that is shining again today in all its uniqueness after recent restorations. Born in the Augustinian convent, the Library now has two locations: the modern collection is housed in the premises of the original cloister of Sant’Agostino, while the ancient and part of the modern collections are kept at the building in Via Garibaldi in Ventimiglia Alta. Here is the great collection of books inaugurated by Friar Angelico Aprosio in 1648, the most ancient public library in Liguria. A visionary and ambitious project that reflects an extraordinary figure: a passionate bibliophile, Aprosio was a man from Ventimiglia who had relations and relationships throughout Europe, as evidenced by the epistolary collections involving him, as many as 47 volumes dating from 1630 to 1680.<\/p>\n

The project of his ideal library, made of shelves and enriched with paintings, is described in \u201cThe Aprosiana Library\u201d text, preserved today as part of the ancient collection. The first of four volumes never published before, the book was printed in Bologna in 1673 with the intention of supporting the public vocation of the library becoming a well-known catalogue at a national level. It is the story of the library and of its books, including the many donors who have allowed Aprosio to set up a heterogeneous collection made of ten thousand ancient and contemporary volumes in Latin and Greek, but also in Italian, French, and Spanish. Among the many friends with whom the friar exchanged letters or were donors he encountered were Gian Domenico Cassini, whose portrait stands out today as part of the collection\u2019s nine surviving paintings that consisted of about thirty faces in the past.<\/p>\n

In addition to the text by Aprosio, the library preserves a Bible dated 1480 and several incunabula, precious printed volumes dating back to the second half of the Fifteenth century.<\/p>\n

[Alessandra Chiappori]<\/p>\n\n\t\t