Book Library

The Pro Civitate Christiana Book Library is a private collection open to the public. It was founded in 1940 by the explicit wish of the founder of Pro Civitate Christiana, Don Giovanni Rossi, as a Center for Christological Studies and holds over 70,000 volumes with a Christological and Christocentric-anthropological focus, as well as a significant ancient collection with sixteenth and seventeenth-century books.

The Library premises are spread over three floors above ground and three floors below street level. The three floors above ground include: a consultation and reading room and four study rooms; the three underground floors are used as a newspaper library and warehouse. The core collections within the Library investigate major branches of Christological studies, including Christology, Theology, Church History, Art, Philosophy, and Literature.

Since 1992, 21,000 titles have been catalogued in ERASMO, but since 2001 the Library has been cooperating with the Umbrian SBN, into which 37,000 titles have been transferred. Furthermore, in 2000 the 16 sixteenth-century books of the Library were digitised. The cataloguing follows the RICA rules for the heading, ISBD/SBN for the cataloguing description and SOGGETTARIO OF FLORENCE for the semantic cataloguing.

Every year, the Library organises a meeting of writers and readers and a philosophy seminar, intending to highlight those universal values that unite every person and pursue the community intent of Don Giovanni Rossi, creating moments of communication and discussion between thinkers and authors of both the secular and the Catholic world.