Library
Brera
The Library of the Milan branch of the Observatory, in addition to a thousand modern books, preservers the historical library which includes approximately 30 thousand titles from the fifteenth century onwards. The volumes include the cornerstones of astronomy, including the De revolutionibus orbium coelestium by Nicolaus Copernicus in the 1566 edition, the Sidereus Nuncius by Galileo Galilei, published in 1610 and a true rarity such as the Epitome of John Regiomontanus from Ptolemy’s Almagest, an incunabulum from 1496 which belonged to Michael Maestlin, Kepler’s teacher. In the Library it is possible to find a large number of ancient and rare magazines. The library catalogue does not include incunabula, sixteenth-century and seventeenth-century books.
Go to the Italian catalog: Monografie Brera
Head of the Brera Library: Agnese Mandrino
Merate
The Library of the Merate branch of the Observatory contains over 6000 books on astronomy and related subjects covering most of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Go to the Italian catalog Monografie Merate
Head of the Merate Library: Giannantonio Guerrero
Historical archive
The Historical Archive primarily preserves scientific material: notebooks and observation diaries, calculation maps, drawings, notes, invitations, passes, travel reports and a very rich correspondence, with over thirty thousand letters from astronomers such as Pierre Simon Laplace, William Herschel, Angelo Secchi, but also from Cesare Beccaria and Napoleon I Bonaparte. The “Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli Fund” contains, among other things, the diaries with the famous observations of Mars. The archive documents also bear witness to the role of the Observatory within civil society, with documents relating to the creation of the sundial in the Milan Cathedral, the drafting of the 1786 Map of Lombardy, the drafting of calendars and ephemerides and the long series of meteorological data.
28/03/2024 – The new archive inventory page is online at the link Archive inventory
Head of historical archive: Agnese Mandrino
Polvere di stelle
Library and museum catalogs, inventories of historical archives
and much more information on the cultural heritage (and not only) of the
Italian astronomical observatories and other institutes merged
in the National Institute of Astrophysics.
