By Our Editorial Staff
Walking through the historic centre of Montepulciano is like flipping through the pages of a story that spans centuries of history. At every glance, in fact, the precious testimonies of that cultural liveliness that has made the town of Poliziano one of the most sought-after destinations in Tuscany open up to the view. The present and the past meet in the streets, churches, ancient palaces, the Crociani Civic Museum (a journey through art starting from Etruscan times) and the “Piero Calamandrei” Municipal Library and Historical Archive, a place of lively cultural exchange which, thanks to the ancient treasures preserved inside, also represents a suggestive access point to distant eras.
Since the beginning of 2000 the Library has been located in Palazzo Sisti, a building of the 1300s located a few steps from Piazza Grande, which the Municipality of Montepulciano purchased in the early 1800s to make it the seat of the Court, which remained in operation until the 80s of the last century. Even today it is possible to see the Audience Hall and, in the basement, the prison cells.
On the three floors in which it is located, the Library houses an ancient collection of about 12,000 volumes and a modern one of about 60,000. Its original nucleus consists of the Library of the Jesuit College that existed in the city, suppressed together with the Order in 1773, later enriched by the results of other suppressions of convents, bequests and purchases.
The use of the Palace by the Municipality has meant that over time a large body of statutes, administrative acts and maps of the territory of Montepulciano has been collected. The possibility of accessing these documents today makes the Archive a time machine: it is enough to leaf through a volume of the statutes of the 1300s to discover the laws that regulated the development of civil society at that time; consult the acts of 1600 to find out about crimes and convicts; open a map of the 1700s to identify places still present today; peek at the texts written in the years just before the Unification of Italy to get to know a Montepulciano that was preparing to enter the contemporary era.
Among the jealously guarded documents of the 20th century, a prominent place is certainly held by the papers of Pietro Calamandrei, a distinguished jurist, anti-fascist intellectual and constitutionalist who had ties with Montepulciano since his youth and the summer holidays spent in the family residence (his grandfather had been a magistrate in the town of Montepulciano). Today the Historical Archive named after him preserves the most familiar and intimate part of his papers and, under the watchful eye of his granddaughter Silvia Calamandrei, currently President of this institution of the Municipality of Montepulciano, enhances his writings through conferences and projects.
These include the creation of the digital platform www.archiviocalamandrei.it, coordinated with other Italian institutes, which from 2024 allows scholars and the general public to enjoy the papers of the great jurist and founding father in a simple and easy way, or the scientific inventory of the works drawn up by the Director of the Municipal Library Historical Archive “P. Calamandrei” Francesca Cenni.
It was she who accompanied us on the visit to the Palace, which also houses the Sala Bozzini, an environment often home to cultural initiatives, conferences and seminars, named after another important Poliziana figure of the last century: Lidio Bozzini. He was a political activist, partisan, publisher, entrepreneur in the artistic field, representative abroad of Italian culture and entertainment, protagonist of the political and institutional scene of the First Republic, which always maintained relations with Montepulciano and Siena. For this reason, 100 years after his birth (February 2, 2022), the family has decided to donate his archive to the Library. It is an important quantity of documents dating back mostly to the years of the Resistance and the battle of Monticchiello, which today represent a valuable source of information on the organization of the partisan struggle between Valdichiana and Val d’Orcia.
At the “P. Calamandrei” Municipal Historical Archive Library, thanks to writings, letters and documents, people from the past are in continuous dialogue with the present and will continue to live with future generations. And it is to bring the little ones closer to books and to these rooms, that the Municipal Library often offers initiatives designed precisely to raise young readers.
In addition to workshops and readings aloud for children, even from six months, there are also book clubs for teenagers, reading circles, thematic events, book presentations and meetings with authors, as well as the traditional loan service. In addition, for those looking for an environment to study or work, the Library offers a comfortable and quiet room, equipped with free Wi-Fi.
Info: Municipal Library and Historical Archive “P. Calamandrei”, Palazzo del Capitano, Piazza Grande 7 – Montepulciano (Si) / Tel. 0578 712562 / www.biblioteca.montepulciano.si.it / info@biblioteca.montepulciano.si.it
