The Charm of Books

From Friday, 27 June to Saturday, 5 July | Continuous opening hours: 10:00 AM – 7:00 PM
Free admission

The Enchantment of Books: Byron in the Tower of Ugolino is the title of the exhibition hosted in the Tower of the Palazzo dell’Orologio at the Scuola Normale Superiore, opening on Friday, 27 June.

The exhibition features, among other highlights, an autograph letter from Lord Byron to Mary Shelley and valuable early 19th-century editions of Byron’s works. Particularly noteworthy is the extremely rare Pisan copy of the first two issues of "The Liberal. Verse and Prose from the South", the magazine conceived by Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Leigh Hunt during their stay in Pisa in 1822. This is the only known copy currently held in Italy and serves as a remarkable testament to the vibrant and often controversial intellectual activity of the so-called “Pisan Circle.”

The exhibition is the result of a collaborative effort involving the Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics of the University of Pisa, the Library of the Scuola Normale Superiore, and is supported by the Pisa Library System and the University Library of Pisa.