University Library of Pavia
10 October – 30 December 2025
Bibliographic exhibition
For the five hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Pavia, the University Library of Pavia (Ministry of Culture) sets up the exhibition The Silence of the Press which tells the story of Pavia’s book production before, during and after the conflict, a crucial moment in the city’s history that is also reflected in the activity of the printing presses.
The exhibition opens with the curated editions of Medicine, Local History, Philosophy, Theology and Religion of the first twenty years of the sixteenth century: many illustrated volumes and there is no shortage of unique examples in Italy.
The plague epidemic, the French siege of 1522 and the harder and longer siege that began in October 1524 and ended on February 24, 1525 with the Battle, imposed a gradual halt to the printing activity. In that year, the only work printed in Pavia is Francesco Taegio’s Narratio, the fulcrum of the exhibition, which recounts the dramatic events of those days. Its diffusion is significant: as early as 1525 it was published in Germany, Switzerland and Cremona; in 1655 it was reprinted twice in Pavia and in 1736 it appeared in Nuremberg.
While the Pavia printing press is silent, the European presses, on the wave of emotion unleashed by the event, print reports, notices and leaflets full of illustrations of the people involved and the places of the conflict: these are the first forms of popular journalism with celebratory purposes and propaganda purposes that continue even in peacetime and which are represented in the exhibition by the reproduction of publications printed in Germany, France and Spain.
It was only in 1539 that the Pavia presses returned to work, also printing some valuable editions, which were offered in the display cases, but from a quantitative point of view, production never recovered its initial momentum.
The exhibition closes with a look at the magnificent volumes printed in the Certosa printing house.
The exhibition will open on Thursday 9 October 2025, at 5.00 pm, in the Teresian Hall of the University Library of Pavia.
TIMES
Monday–Thursday: 8.30 a.m.-6.30
p.m. Friday-Saturday: 8.30 a.m.-1.30 p.m.
WHERE
University Library – Strada Nuova 65 – Pavia
INFO
Phone: 0382 24764 Mail: bu-pv@cultura.gov.it