The origins of the Library of Modern and Contemporary History date back to June 1880, when the Chamber of Deputies approved Pasquale Villari’s proposal to create a collection of books, pamphlets, and documents relating to the Italian Risorgimento. Thus was born the Risorgimento Section of the Vittorio Emanuele II National Library of Rome.
In 1906, the National Committee for the History of the Risorgimento was established with the task of creating a library and museum of the Risorgimento. In 1917, the Risorgimento Section took the name Central Library of the Risorgimento, assuming the form of an autonomous library under its own curator. The definitive detachment from the National Library was formalized in 1921 with the transfer of the collections to Palazzetto Venezia; in 1923 the name was changed again to Library-Museum-Archive of the Risorgimento and in 1924 it was established that it was to be headed by a curator-custodian belonging to the librarian corps and directly dependent on the Ministry of Public Education.
In the years 1937-1938 some measures profoundly changed the nature of the Library, carrying out a radical dismantling of the Risorgimento collection: the bibliographic materials remained in the Library, while the museum and documentary materials were handed over to the Historical Institute for the Age of the Risorgimento, based at the Vittoriano, with the important exception of the autographs from the Mazzinian collection. By Royal Decree of November 22, 1937, no. 2181, the Library took on its current name of Library of Modern and Contemporary History and in 1939, as the last act of this complex story, it was transferred to Palazzo Mattei di Giove, where it is still located today.
In 1945 the Library was placed directly under the Ministry of Public Education and then, from 1975, under the Ministry for Cultural and Environmental Heritage. The collection initially remained tied to its original focus on predominantly Risorgimento studies and only from the 1960s onwards did its scope begin to be significantly broadened. Current orientations aim to provide basic tools for studying the history of Italy and other countries from the 16th to the 21st centuries, with particular attention to the 19th and 20th centuries.
