The tradition of humanities in Florence found a point of reference and a great opportunity for development in the Philosophy and Philology Section of the Higher Institute of Vocational and Advanced Studies, established by the Provisional Government of Tuscany in December 1859.
The distinguished lecturers who determined the international prestige of the Section also contributed to the establishment and growth of the Library, the initial nucleus of the current Humanities Library of the University. They also donated it it their own personal "libraries", which often included manuscripts and documents: we are talking about eminent Italian personalities such as Pasquale Villari, Domenico Comparetti, Ernesto Giacomo Parodi, Fausto Lasinio, Felice Tocco, Francesco De Sarlo, to whom other distinguished scholars were added, such as Alessandro D'Ancona.
These collections are flanked by private collections and archives of exponents of the historical avant-garde: Papini, Palazzeschi, Costetti, Borgese. There are also numerous volumes with autograph dedications of personalities such as Ungaretti, Montale, Marinetti. Thanks also to the presence of the institutional archive of the Section of Philosophy and Philology, which offers many unprecedented testimonies, the Humanities Library is therefore able to qualify as a unit of excellence for the study of the intellectual and artistic history of Florence between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The patrimony of the Library comprises also volumes from the grand-ducal collections and the Institute of Education, libraries of institutions and societies, such as the Philosophical Library, and the prestigious Bardi library.
Today holdings are estimated at over 1,600,000 volumes, sixty book and archival collections and 35,700 antique editions, to which are added manuscripts and geographical maps: through multiple channels, the Humanistic Library has thus become the repository of a memory that goes back over the centuries until the dawn of the press.
From this rich repository, manuscripts and printed volumes of particular interest have been selected, to represent the lines of development of the humanistic studies of the Florentine university and testify of the fruitful relationship with the history, culture and institutions of the town.
In this section there are also displayed four papyri from the precious collection of the Papyrological Institute named after Girolamo Vitelli, among the greatest "masters" of this Section.
