The Archiginnasio, the Seat of the University of Bologna in Modern Times

The Alma Mater Studiorum of Bologna, believed to be the first university in the Western world, began its life towards the end of the 11th century, when the masters of grammar, rhetoric and logic opened a school of juridical studies. Thereafter, teaching independent of the ecclesiastical schools became rooted in the city and the school became famous beyond its borders due to some of its most illustrious masters, such as the glossarist Irnerius and his disciples and followers (Bulgarus, Martinus Gosia, Jacopus and Hugo de Porta Ravennate) . Originally, the free collectio of money among the disciples guaranteed the teaching. However, there was no regular method of financing until the municipality of Bologna assumed responsibility for the costs and thereby stabilise the city’s schools; and Frederick Barbarossa moved to protect the young institution with an Imperial Constitution (1158) that was supposed to safeguard teaching from the intrusions of external authorities and the people of the scholares who were travelling for reasons of study. Moreover, the students themselves gained strength based on their origins: on the one hand, there was the Citramontani (from the near side of the Alps on the Italian peninsula, but not the Bolognese, Lombards, Tuscans or Romans), and on the other, the Ultramontani (non-Italians living beyond the Alps, including French, Spanish, Provencal, English, Picards, Burgundians, Normans, Catalans, Hungarians, Poles, Germans, etc). The concept and economic autonomy of the university made the student body grow – in the 14th century, there were more than two thousand students. And it also enriched the teaching, because the jurists were flanked by ʻartists’, i.e. the scholars of medicine, philosophy, arithmetic, astronomy, logic, rhetoric and grammar, and, as of 1364, theology. Over time, the teaching was updated and enriched, not only by Greek and Hebrew, but also by new disciplines, such as ʻnatural magicʼ, i.e. experimental science, which was well represented by the philosopher Pietro Pomponazzi , the scientist Ulisse Aldrovandi , the plastic surgeon Gaspare Tagliacozzi . The great European intellectuals – from Dante to Petrarch, Thomas Becket to Paracelsus, Ramon de Penyafort to Albrecht Dürer, Carlo Borromeo to Torquato Tasso – loved stopping by the University of Bologna. Pico della Mirandola and Leon Battista Alberti studied canon law there, as did Nicolaus Copernicus who, at the same time, pursued his astronomical observations. As the institution was becoming consolidated and its image was being disseminated abroad, the need grew for a building that could reflect the antiquity of the institution and also make it possible to improve the university’s potential in the new era that were being envisioned in the 16th century. Indeed, this was when people started talking about a single and prestigious seat for the Bolognese university, that would be – as Michel de Montaigne observed in 1580 – the most beautiful building dedicated to the teaching of the sciences .