Warm in winter and cool in summer, Perugia’s libraries are a beautiful world open to all Italian citizens and to foreigners who find themselves in the city. Exactly because there are many of them, well stocked with books and audiovisuals, more and more people of various ages, sometimes entire families, frequent these places that are friendly, free and comfortable. After all, you don’t have to be a bespeckled bookworm to come across them.
Right downtown at the Pincetto minimetrò stop, we find the Arconi, a recently-opened library with avant-garde instrumentation, even videogame stations.
The largest and most important library is the Biblioteca Augusta, operating since 1623 and located at Porta Sole. Currently, the building that hosts it is under renovation for safety reasons. The Villa Urbani library, surrounded by greenery, is unfortunately temporarily inactive. Also downtown in via Mazzini, there is the Biblioteca delle donne Laura Cipollone inside the Centro per le pari opportunità (equal opportunity centre). And in the area of via Maestà delle Volte, there is the Circolo Amerindiano, part of the municipal libraries of Perugia.
Outside the Cassero di Porta Sant’Angelo, we find the San Matteo degli Armeni complex with the library of the same name dedicated to the promoter of nonviolence in Italy, the Perugino philosopher Aldo Capitini: the complex is also home to a beautiful community vegetable garden experiment, a grassroots creation. But even the suburbs of the city can enjoy gathering places, garrisons of civilization: at San Sisto, there is the Sandro Penna library built in the shape of a futuristic spaceship, pink in colour, while in a very central location of Ponte San Giovanni, there is the Biblionet, a modern and airy construction with a very large parking lot. So there is nothing but a vast choice. Of course, one has to find the time to go and choose a book to borrow in the city …
For information about all the free weekly activities held in these places (activities that range from the teaching of English to reading labs for children, from film clubs to courses in design for adults, and many more), you can write to bibliotechepg@comune.perugia.it. The site provides a form to sign up for the newsletter that from one week to the next lists the meetings at the library.
As time slows down in the autumn, it would be great to head to a lovely place and be surrounded by attractive and well-organised volumes.