Reports: The New Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome
Who ever said that libraries – particularly those of the scholarly sort – are only places to store books? Scholarly work – reading, sifting through archive files, chopping one’s way through the data banks, and, most gruelling of all, writing – these are all exceedingly solitary activities. But in the library one runs into one’s friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and competitors. Books merely provide a fitting setting – and an excuse – for such encounters. And this has always been the case at the Villa Hertziana in Rome. With its 300,000 volumes and more than 1000 periodicals and yearbooks, it is, admittedly, also Italy’s largest library of art history, whose noble, latinised “th” emphasises the scholarly commitment and the, in the meantime, century-old tradition of this very Roman – and, in fact, German – institution. The book collection constitutes the core of the Max Planck Institute for Art History, and it has always been the meeting place in Rome for the international community of art historians. However, the 1960s reinforced-concrete structure in which the books and study areas were housed had all the charm of a parking garage. In the mid-1990s, when the building no longer met the fire-protection regulations, and the growing collection and increasing number of users could no longer be accommodated, the Institute decided to host a competition. The architects who took part had minimal leeway. In the heart of historic Rome, just a few paces from the Spanish Steps, there is limited space – and in the eyes of preservationists, none at all for contemporary architecture.
