Historical collection

The original nucleus of the current Antique Collection, it was formed by way of successive acquisitions from the second half of the nineteenth to the first half of the twentieth century, above all through donations.
It consists of around 2200 volumes, over 500 of which are editions from the 16th century and 350 editions from the 17th century, mostly from the library of the Hegelian scholar Arturo Moni (acquired in 1938) and in a lesser quantity from the private collections of the scholar of Dantean literature Alessandro Torri (acquired as a donation in 1855), the mathematicians Enrico Betti and Cesare Finzi (acquired as gifts in 1893 and in 1907 respectively) and the literary historian Francesco Flamini (acquired as a gift in 1931).

The acquisition of the library of Arturo Moni, of a predominantly historical-philosophical and linguistic-literary nature, albeit enriched by editions of a scientific nature, was widely supported by Giovanni Gentile, the then director of the Scuola Normale and friend of this scholar from Lucca, of which there remains a masterful translation of Hegel's The Science of Logic (Bari, Laterza, 1924-25), commissioned by Benedetto Croce.