Libreria Bozzi
The library, opened in 1810 in the "new road" by the French Antonio Boeuf, already first clerk Gravier bookseller, is perhaps the oldest in Italy. It’s situated in the seventeenth century cloister of the San Siro church, inside you can still see some marble columns of the cloister. Conducted for 85 years by the Boeuf family is sold at first to the "Company limited Lattes S. & C." in Turin and then to Alberto Colombo who in 1927 sold it to the Bozzi family, who still owns the historical library in Via Cairoli. Always been a reference point for the Genoese in search of books and rarities, it was rebuilt after the war badly damaged the shops by bombing the city. Go to the library means to breath a charming air of another era: under the ceiling with cross vaults are original wooden chests, balustrades with the ancient railings and the nineteenth-century sign in bronze and gilded wood, "Library of Marina R. and RR Principles”. Although lost the archive, the library Bozzi still owns an interesting collection of books with rare books and historical documents. Among the best seller and rarity still it seems to see wandering prestigious visitors among the shelves: from Stendhal to Manzoni, from Dickens to Melville, from Henry James to Pirandello and Montale. Since its opening, with the trade in books and prints, this library has added important publishing and cultural activities: there was annexed a "Reading Circle" and was the first seat of the Society of Scientific Readings and Conversations, fundamental institution for life intellectual of Genoa between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
1810
Opened in the “newest street” in 1810 by Antonio Boeuf, it is perhaps the oldest library of Italy. Partly rebuilt in the fifties as a result of war damage it preserves ancient and valuable material among old shelves and columns of the seventeenth-century cloister of the church of San Siro. The Bozzi family runs it since 1927.
