Galleries of Dante and Galileo

The twin towers that flank the entrance of the National Central Library of Florence (BNCF) form what is traditionally called the Tribuna dantesca e galileiana (Galleries of Dante and Galileo). At the original core of this prestigious library were the approximately 30,000 volumes that Antonio Magliabechi (official librarian of Cosimo III de’ Medici) bequeathed to the city of Florence upon his death in 1714.

The municipal government continued adding to this collection, then located in the Uffizi complex, and opened it to the general public in 1747. By the end of the 1800s, it had become large enough to merit its own monumental structure, which you see here.

The architect Cesare Bazzani (designer also of the S. M. Novella train station) was awarded the task of creating it in 1902 but didn’t lay the first stone until 1911. In 1929 the Galleries of Dante and Galileo were the first section to be completed, but the entire structure was not finished for another six years. The statue of Dante you see here represents the humanities and that of Galileo the sciences.

Above: statue of Antonio Magliabechi (1633-1714) located inside the BNCF

Magliabechi was remembered by those who knew him as an eccentric hunchback who hoarded books throughout his life and often wore mismatched clothes that had been blackened from his habit of warming himself too close to the fireplace. Considering that his is also the last face you see when exiting the Uffizi, we would be forgiven for thinking of him as a wacky Florentine uncle.

In 1889, Ravenna gave some ashes or bits of Dante’s bones to the Italian Senate and to the Florentine Library. Originally, the room beneath this statue was to house those ashes in a monumental urn. In the meantime, the remains were sealed in an envelope and placed in a desk drawer to await their final resting place. Unfortunately, however, they were still in that drawer when the desk was given away with other pieces of old furniture between 1929 and 1935 and have not been seen since.

The four words below this statue are the first of the following quotation:

“Questo sarà luce nova, sole novo, lo quale surgerà là dove l’usato tramonterà, e darà luce a coloro che sono in tenebre ed in oscuritade per lo usato sole che a loro non luce.” (Convivio 1.13.12)

“This will be a new light, a new sun, that will rise where the normal one will set, and it will give light to all who dwell in darkness and gloom, for the old sun casts no light on them.”

The subject is the Italian language, which Dante predicts will attain great glory and prestige, perhaps even surpassing the magnificence of Latin itself.

When Dante lived in Florence, this area was swampy and often flooded when the level of the Arno was high. Downstream a bit, where the old Altafronte castle (now the Galileo museum) used to stand, the ground rose up substantially.