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The Storia
Patria Nostra
Library
 My least
favorite quote
about books is from the Bible, Ecclesiastes 12:12—“…of making many
books there
is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh…”. It is,
however, the
one favored by most of my college students. My favorite quote, on the
other hand,
is from Groucho Marx: “Outside of a
dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to
read.”
Which reminds me—I have no
dog, but the Storia Patria Nostra
library has long been one of my best friends in Naples. Whether I want an item about
the
recent history of Naples or the front
page of
the March 13, 1918 Mattino (which
chronicled a WWI German Zeppelin attack
on Naples),
they put up with me. Even
cheerfully. They look at my scribbled request slip, wonder why I don’t
cross my
7’s, smile, disappear for a moment and reappear with the goods.
The origins of the
Storia
Patria Nostra library can be traced to the Neapolitan
Historical Society founded in 1843, well before the unification of Italy.
Under the current name, however, the society and library were founded
in 1875. The
library now occupies sections of two floors of the Maschio Angioino,
the great
fortress at the port
of Naples.
The holdings
of the library consist of about
350,000 volumes and monographs plus an enormous number of newspapers
and other
periodicals. It is the largest such institution in southern Italy and, indeed, is one of many such
regional
societies in Italy,
each dedicated to its own local history. For the foreigner, it is
important to
remember that “Patria nostra”
does not mean simply the city of Naples, and not
even just the province. It
should be understood in the sense of “southern Italy.”
The society that governs
the library also publishes the periodical Archivio
Storico per le Province Napoletane, an
important scholarly journal that was,
between 1899 and 1932, in the diligent hands of Benedetto Croce, one of
the great
historians and scholars in European history. The library hosts numerous
conferences and discussions, as well.
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