Salita dei Frati Library

The Salita dei Frati Library, which has been established since the 16th century, is housed in a building designed by architect Mario Botta near the Capuchin Convent in Lugano and was opened to the public in 1980 to make the convent's rich library holdings available to scholars and readers.

Most of the 110,000 volumes and 400 periodicals thus come from the convent's library, which was formed and developed in the 16th and 18th centuries. Particularly relevant are the Ticinese editions, the areas of history and local history, asceticism and preaching (many texts useful for the study of popular religiosity), literature and rhetoric.

Over the years, other collections, donated or acquired, have been added, most notably the collection of Father Giovanni Pozzi (10,000 books and 4,400 abstracts), which includes, in addition to a considerable amount of seventeenth-century authors, some of them rare, works on literary methodology, semiotics, iconology and theory of mystical language.

The Library, to which a substantial collection of devotional images is also attached, is part of the Ticino Library System and participates in the e-rara.ch project, which makes available publicly and free of charge digitized reproductions of editions from the 16th to 19th centuries.

The Salita dei Frati Library is managed by the association of the same name, which constantly increases its bibliographic holdings and organizes cultural activities (conferences, symposia, seminars) on topics of religious culture (spirituality, the Bible, Franciscanism), bibliography, philosophy, history, literature and an exhibition activity aimed mainly at artists' books.