[NEDBIB-L] BBC: Naples' Girolamini: The looting of a 16th Century library

Naples' Girolamini: The looting of a 16th Century library

By Alan Johnston BBC News, Italy


Book-lovers around the world have been helping investigators trace
thousands of rare volumes looted from one of Italy's oldest libraries by
a gang of thieves including the librarian himself. While most have been
recovered, a number of invaluable 15th and 16th Century books are still
missing.

Inside a 16th Century church complex in the heart of Naples, the
Biblioteca Girolamini's wooden shelves rise up and up towards richly
decorated walls and vaulted ceilings.

They once held works of extraordinary value. There was a 1518 edition of
Thomas More's brilliant and mysterious Utopia. Galileo's 1610 treatise
Sidereus Nuncius, containing more than 70 drawings of the moon and the
stars. And Johannes Kepler's study of the motions of Mars, Astronomia
Nova, described as one of greatest books in the history of astronomy.

But this magnificent piece of Italy's cultural heritage was methodically
plundered. Thousands of antique texts disappeared.

"Our investigations found that there was a true criminal system in
action," says Major Antonio Coppola, a police chief who is leading the
operation to recover the stolen texts. "A group of people... carried out
a devastating, systematic looting of the library."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25403595



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