The Didactic Museum of Ancient Books
VILLA D'ESTE - TIVOLI
 
The Didactic Museum of Ancient Book's Laboratory is a private institute, which provides free entrance for visitors, authorized by the Minister for Cultural Activities and by the Minister for Public Education; it has been founded and directed since 1979 by Professor Antonio Basile, the man who has created the most successful integrative education centre in Italy, attended by 11,000 students.
The centre is situated in Villa d'Este's gardens, a UNESCO patrimony, in two rooms in the square in front of Ovato's fountain, which is the symbol of Tivoli, represented by the famous Sibilla Tiburtina, the city's Divinity Protector and the creator of the legendary sibylline books.
The museum is an international centre for conferences, seminaries and didactic activities, whose team of experts are committed to research, preservation and technical-scientific reconstruction of ancient documents, from papyrus to printed papers, using writing and pictorial techniques.
The institution, peculiar in its world wide known originality, guides us in a trip through our memory, to discover the history, the secrets and the technology of the ancient Tibur "book myth", rebuilding and transcribing in the laboratory of the Villa not only regional documents, but also ancient writings on commission of Italian and foreign museums and universities.
The most famous writings by Professor Antonio Basile are: an important papyrus in hieratic writing for the Vatican Museum; another one in hieroglyphic writing for the Frank McClung Museum of Tennessee, a group of papyri and parchments in Latin and Greek for the Roman Imperial Library of the Roman Civilization Museum. In the Villa d'Este Museum they have realized and exhibited for visitors, Lyntei books, cartonage, caepsae, tabulae ceratae and daelbatae, parchments and papyri painted in miniature from Tivoli's churches, instruments and materials for writing, palettes for scribes and for painters, pigments and natural glue, stylus, kalamus.
There are, also exhibited, original stamps and Tivoli' incunabula, XV century books, aqua colours and engravings from Villa d'Este and its territories, from XV to XIX century.
The centre recalls, with its publications, light panels and captions and with the research activity of teachers and students, the culture of the "sacred writings" of Sybil, who announced to the world the birth of Jesus Christ, the books of Emperor Adriano and of Hercules Templum, famous for his Aristotelic texts.
Among the activities of the laboratory, it's important to remember that, using rare instruments, materials, ancient presses and engravings, the famous fountains of Villa d'Este are printed and painted in miniature on handmade paper with the techniques used to produce the Tiburtine paper in 1477 tenuis papyrus carta and the well-known printing of the typographer Domenico Piolati (1577)
Works and librarian documents made for museums and universities
The Museum riproduces original historical texts on paper using the relative writing and decorative techniques.
Information
History of the book in Tivoli
The laboratory
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