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entry
Dec 2008
The Italian
Institute for Historical Studies In an age of modern public universities and
libraries it is easy to forget how important smaller private institutes
and academies have been in European history. Early modern science often
took place under the auspices of such organizations, among others, as
the Accademia dei Lincei in
Rome. They are still important in Naples. Besides simply owning a lot
of books, these organizations offer courses of study, seminars and
discussion groups; they amount practically
to mini-universities. Covered elsewhere is an entry, for example, on
the Institute for Philosophical Studies.
Better known, perhaps, is the organization founded by Italy’s most
prominent historian of the twentieth century, Benedetto Croce, the Istituto italiano per gli studi Storici.The Italian Institute for Historical Studies was founded in 1946 by Croce on the premises of his own home in the Palazzo Filomarino (entrance, photo, left) in the heart of the old city, just across from the church and monastic complex of Santa Chiara (number 5 on this map). The Institute now takes up three floors of the building and describes its goal as “…to foster] “a greater awareness of history in relation to the study of the philosophy of logic, ethics, law, economy and politics, religion and those arts which define and demonstrate human values…”
Benedetto Croce
 The library at present
contains 130,000 volumes, 400 current periodicals and a growth of 2000
volumes per year. The original library was obviously Croce’s but has
been greatly augmented by the addition of other private collections
donated or purchased over the decades. The emphasis in the acquisition
of books has been on not simply
duplicating material that is easily found elsewhere. The Institute
holds seminars and
conferences, and it awards scholarships to young graduates both from
Italy and abroad. By now, entire generations of young scholars have
studied there. A short, random sampling from a very long list of upcoming
lectures and discussions:
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