Area espositiva ICPAL - Istituto Centrale per la Patologia degli Archivi e del Libro

It was founded by Alfonso Gallo as the didactic section of the Institute he had already founded in 1938. It exhibits a record of cases of damages that a book can suffer due to physical (light and heat), chemical (acid inks), biological (insects and microorganisms) agents, or to exceptional events, such as earthquakes, floods, and wars. The collection includes various findings such as inks, writing media, volumes, and fragments of particularly “ill” books, that are corroded, charred, or even riddled with bullets.
Today it has a renewed material path especially in multimedia presentations: interactive screens and emotional spaces combine with continuity with the past, represented by the original nucleus.