2023-12-22 17:02:15
Time.news – Traces of 361 ancient books that were kept in the prestigious building have been lost Girolamini Library of Naples. The Carabinieri have the authority to execute a preventive seizure decree issued by the investigating judge of Naples for the works bookstore illicitly taken from the unavailable assets of the Italian State. These are precious volumes, many of which date back to the 1500s and 1600s, which were illegally removed from the ancient Girolamini Library in Naples, one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the city, among the richest libraries in the South, with a heritage bookshop of approximately 159,700 units including ancient and modern volumes and pamphlets, also frequented by the philosopher Giambattista Vico in 1700.
Traces of the books covered by the decree have currently been lost. The seizure order was reached after a long and patient inventory activity started in the aftermath of the seizure ordered in 2012 of the monumental complex plundered and looted over the years; thousands of books stolen, some of which were sold abroad, including at auctions. The inventory work of stolen goodsordered by the Naples Prosecutor’s Office, was found to be an extremely difficult condition of “organized chaos” created by previous managements of the Girolamini.
In 2011, in fact, Marino Massimo De Caro, former consultant to the minister for cultural heritage at the time, Giancarlo Galan, was appointed director of the library, a choice which sparked controversy as well as a series of articles denouncing the state of abandonment e di degradation of the library.
There was also a petition to urge the removal of De Caro by the new minister for cultural heritage Lorenzo Ornaghi, who succeeded Galan. In April 2012 the complex was seized by the police and an investigation was launched against De Caro, who suspended himself from office. The investigations led to the discovery, in the province of Verona, of a deposit, attributable to him, containing 240 books stolen from the Neapolitan library, also ascertaining that many other volumes had already been illegally sold abroad. Both De Caro and the conservative Don Salvatore Marsano, who had indicated him to Minister Galan, were arrested.
De Caro, a self-confessed criminal, was definitively sentenced in 2015 to seven years’ imprisonment for embezzlement and to perpetual disqualification from holding public office; the Court of Auditors also sentenced him to compensation of almost twenty million euros for the serious impoverishment of the library’s book holdings caused by his criminal conduct.
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