[Adalberto Pazzini and the origins of the Istituto di Storia della Medicina].

The first part of the paper deals with the Italian tradition of medical history in the 1930s, when Adalberto Pazzini became the most successful medical historian in Italy. Its second part deals with the founding and renovation (1938 and 1954 respectively) of the Istituto di Storia della Medicina at Rome University, with a description of the innovative--and largely utopian--planning of the Library and of the Museum and didactic collections by Pazzini.