The 'libraria' of the Capuchin friars of Sanremo and Francesco Corradi's donation

The essay starts from the will with which the physician Francesco Corradi, born in Sanremo and died in Genoa in 1865, disposed of his own legacy for various charitable purposes including the creation in his hometown of a public library. Until then, this institute was non-existent in the face of the presence of book collections belonging to religious orders, including Jesuits and Capuchins: the latter’s own books, acquired following the laws of suppression of the ecclesiastical bodies of 1866 and 1867, constituted the first core of the Corradi Library along with the volumes belonging to the doctor himself. The study therefore through the examination of the notes of possession tries to reconstruct the origin and organization of the friars’ collection, then through the analysis of the documentation produced in the meetings of the Municipal Council of Sanremo examines the formative process of the current Civic Library.