The Biblioteca Vallicelliana (Piazza della Chiesa Nuova 18, Rome, in the Oratorio dei Filippini complex, the Borromini-designed building attached to the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella/Chiesa Nuova, adjacent to Corso Vittorio Emanuele II in the historic center) is the third major historic public library of Rome alongside the Biblioteca Angelica and the Biblioteca Casanatense, and the one that the Rome historic library circuit consistently overlooks: the Vallicelliana's Oratorian provenance (the library of the Congregation of the Oratory, the religious community founded by San Filippo Neri in Rome in the 1560s), its position inside the Borromini masterpiece of the Oratorio dei Filippini (the 1637-1650 building by Francesco Borromini that is simultaneously the library building, the assembly hall, and the music performance space of the Oratorian community), and its collection of 130,000 volumes with the specific strength in Italian religious and humanist literature of the 16th-17th centuries make it as historically significant as its better-known neighbors.
The San Filippo Neri connection: Filippo Neri (1515-1595, the Florentine-born priest who founded the Oratory in Rome, who was canonized in 1622, and who is perhaps the most specifically Roman of the Counter-Reformation saints, his specific approach to spiritual revival through informal gathering, music, discussion, and the specific combination of piety and humor that characterized the Oratorian community) collected the nucleus of the Vallicelliana library from his own books and the donations of the circle of humanist scholars and churchmen who formed the early Oratorian community. The library that Neri's community developed from this nucleus is now the Vallicelliana: 130,000 volumes, 500 manuscripts, and 3,000 letters and documents in the Neri archive.
How do you want to see it?
Lazio, ItalyCompare the same experience on GetYourGuide and Viator, save what you like to My Trip, share it, and book when you’re sure. Nearest to this page first.
Biblioteca Vallicelliana: Library, Building, and Visit
The Borromini Oratorio
The Oratorio dei Filippini (the Borromini building containing the Vallicelliana library, the specific Borromini building that introduced the concave-convex facade movement into Roman architecture, predating the Sant'Agnese in Agone and the Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, and that houses the Vallicelliana library on its upper floors, the music hall in the central section, and the chapter room on the ground floor) is accessible through the library entrance (the reading room access) and occasionally through the Borromini study tours organized by the architectural culture associations of Rome. The Borromini facade of the Oratorio (visible from the Piazza della Chiesa Nuova, the brick facade with the specific concave-convex movement that Borromini used as the first large-scale application of his dynamic architectural vocabulary) is freely visible from the piazza.
The Vallicelliana Collection and Access
The Biblioteca Vallicelliana reading room (open Monday-Friday 8:30-19:30, accessible with identity document registration at the entrance, no advance booking required for the reading room visit) holds the 18th-century library hall as its primary public space: the hall (built in the 1730s to house the growing collection, with the original wooden bookcases and the painted ceiling) is smaller and less spectacular than the Casanatense Salone but has the specific Oratorian character, the intellectual warmth, the specific combination of religious and humanist bibliography, that the Dominican Casanatense and the Augustinian Angelica don't replicate.
Q&A: Biblioteca Vallicelliana
What is unique about the Vallicelliana collection?
The Vallicelliana holds the most complete collection of material related to San Filippo Neri and the early Oratorian community available in any single institution: the 3,000 letters in the Neri archive (the correspondence that Filippo Neri and his community exchanged with the principal figures of the Counter-Reformation Church. Cardinals Borromeo, Baronio, Tarugi, are the primary sources for the intellectual and spiritual history of the Oratory in its formative period), the library of Cesare Baronio (the cardinal-historian who was Neri's closest intellectual collaborator and who compiled the 12-volume Annales Ecclesiastici, the most ambitious history of the Catholic Church attempted to the 16th century), and the specific humanist library that the Oratorian community accumulated through Neri's network of scholar-clergy friends.
Internal Links
- Il Circuito delle Biblioteche Storiche di Roma
- Casanatense vs Vallicelliana: Le Grandi Sale
- Borromini: L'Oratorio dei Filippini come Capolavoro
- Roma Invernale: Le Biblioteche come Rifugio
- Fotografare la Facciata di Borromini: Tecnica
- San Filippo Neri: Il Santo Allegro della Controriforma
- Roma Nascosta: Le Istituzioni Oratoriane
