Projects

The Fondazione Umberto Eco has catalogued Umberto Eco’s personal library — approximately 35,000 volumes, including 1,200 rare books — and has organized his papers while preserving their original authorial order. The catalogues are available to the Italian Ministry of Culture, the University of Bologna, and the Biblioteca Braidense.

In addition to an inventory of annotated and marginally marked books, the Foundation has designed and published on this website an innovative, annotated bibliography that reconstructs the genetic links between texts and editions. This bibliography will be progressively enriched with new content.

From the bibliography stems an experimental project: a secure database, authorized by Eco’s heirs, that will collect all of Umberto Eco’s texts. Accessible through a private large language model (LLM) and regulated within a closed-domain system, it will enable thematic searches and, in part, provide open access to a broader public.

From the edition of a rare printing of the Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae by Heinrich Khunrath — physician, philosopher, and alchemist (1560–1605) — originates an international research project carried out in collaboration with CNR-ILIESI and the University of Lausanne. The project focuses on Umberto Eco’s rare book collection and explores its connections with some of his novels.

The projects aimed at enhancing the Bibliotheca semiologica, curiosa, lunatica, magica et pneumatica — the name of Eco’s collection of rare books, now housed at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense — range from the creation of a user-friendly interface for OPAC catalogues (dedicated to the Umberto Eco holdings), to exhibitions, conferences, and thematic events. Among these, a 2026 exhibition dedicated to The Island of the Day Before will be held at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense.

In collaboration with various institutions and universities, this project aims to create a virtual library of Umberto Eco’s documentary heritage — a “list of lists” and a “map of maps” — based on photographic images of the original book shelves from his Milan home-studio. Curated by the Foundation, these will be made navigable through hypertextual links.