Fu Albano Sorbelli, disciple of Giosuè Carducci and director for many years of the Archiginnasio Library, who led the reorganization of the book and archival material and the faithful reconstruction of the poet’s daily living environment.
The building of Casa Carducci, which dates back to the 1500s, was for at least two centuries a place of worship for the Confraternity of Santa Maria della Pietà known as del Piombo. In 1798, following the Napoleonic suppressions, the premises were converted into residences. From 1890, the Carducci, who had been present in Bologna since 1860, the year he was called to teach Italian Literature at the University, lived there.
Purchased, while still inhabited by the poet, by Queen Margherita—precisely to prevent the dispersal of the heritage gathered through years of study—the residence was donated to the Municipality of Bologna shortly after Carducci’s death, in 1907.
Decorated in the style of late nineteenth-century bourgeois houses, the apartment retains its original layout. The dominant element is the library rich with forty thousand volumes, including many rare editions, eight hundred eighty fifteenth-century books, and texts commented and annotated by Carducci himself. The books cataloged and arranged by the poet, by author or subject, are distributed in six rooms: foreign authors in the entrance hall, Italian literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and texts on the Risorgimento in the second room; in the study, around the work table and on the walls, are the collection of Dante editions, Latin classics, and reference works. Books are also arranged in the bedroom and the dining room.
In the four wardrobes of the corridor is preserved the archival material with correspondences and manuscripts. On the walls, in the various rooms, are visible busts and portraits of Carducci. Next to the building, leaning against the city walls, is the memorial garden, dominated by the monument to Carducci.
Carved in Carrara white marble by Leonardo Bistolfi, it was inaugurated in 1928: four panels depicting complex allegories on literary work and the historical Risorgimento events provide the backdrop to a statue of the poet seated in a pensive pose.
