Almo Collegio Borromeo
PAVIA - fondato nel 1561
storY
A PALACE FOR KNOWLEDGE
“In the year 1564,
in the city of Pavia, Pellegrino started his work on a Palace for Knowledge”,
Giorgio Vasari wrote in his Vite de’ più eccellenti Architetti, Pittori
et Scultori. With those words he noted the birth of Collegio Borromeo. The
foundation stone was laid on June 19th 1564; however, the Papal Bull decreeing
the foundation dated back to three years before, on October 15, 1561, and
the project had been assigned to Pellegrino Pellegrini, an architect known
as Tibaldi (1526-1596).
In 1581, Montaigne mentioned the construction site, with the attentive
traveler’s eye typical of his works, in his Journal de Voyage en Italie:
“[…] and beyond (that) I saw the basis of Carlo Borromeo’s building for
the Students”. The building had been decorated in 1579 with a chapel consecrated
to Saint Giustina, patron of the Borromeo family; in the years 1603-1604
it was embellished with a series of paintings, by Cesare Nebbia and his
apprentices. Together with the “Imposition of the Cardinal Hat” on the South
Wall, these works on the Vault and North Wall were dedicated to Carlo Borromeo.
More additions to the building were made during the following years. Designed
by Francesco Maria Richini in the 1620s, two risalits of portici were added
on the East Side, along with an enclosure for the garden, which included
the closing fountain. Also completed was the wall facing the River Ticino,
by architect Giuseppe Pollack in 1818-1820, with the demolition of the Church
of San Giovanni in Borgo, according to the drawings by Tibaldi (so dear
to Stendhal).
Since the day it
officially opened, April 1, 1581 (as Alessandro Manzoni stated in the XXII
chapter of his I Promessi Sposi, that was also the year when Federico Borromeo
made his entrance as a student of the college; he was to become cardinal-archbishop
of Milan and founder of Biblioteca Ambrosiana), the structure has hosted
around 4,000 students.
It was founded to provide an adequate moral education – in accordance with
the Counter-Reformation atmosphere of that time – to students who were intellectually
talented but financially poor, and therefore unable to enroll at University
of Pavia.
During the XVII and XVIII centuries the college was attended mostly by jurists
who were to hold positions in the government, in the State of Milan and
in the Catholic Church’s administration: Cesare Monti, Federico Visconti,
Giuseppe Pozzobonelli; cardinal-archbishops of Milan such as Marco Arese,
chief of the Supreme Court and highest office in the whole State; Giorgio
Clerici, President of the Senate; several bishops and cardinals such as
Giuseppe Alessandro Furietti, an expert of ancient mosaics.
In the years to come, the following students graduated from Borromeo: Pietro
Custodi, associate of minister Prina; Giuseppe Ferrari, representative of
the Republican-Federalist school of thought and protagonist of the “Risorgimento”;
Contardo Ferrini, distinguished teacher of Roman Law and ordained “blessed”
by the Catholic Church; Scipione Ronchetti, Justice Minister during the
governments of Giolitti and Tittoni, presenter of the law on “condanna condizionale”.
Amongst the Medicine majors: Agostino Bertani, organizer of the Expedition
of the Thousand and Garibaldi’s secretary, also promoter of the Code of
Public Hygiene; Enrico Acerbi, precursor of the science of Bacteriology,
mentioned by Alessandro Manzoni in his I Promessi Sposi; Lamberto Parravicini,
surgeon; Carlo Forlanini, inventor of the first artificial pneumothorax
against tuberculosis. Amongst majors in Mathematics, Engineering and Physics:
Giovanni Codazza, director of the Royal Museum of Industry in Turin; Francesco
Brioschi, founder of Politecnico di Milano and author of 279 scientific
publications; Gaspare Mainardi, expert of Differential Geometry (and co-inventor
of the Gauss-Mainardi-Codazzi Formula); Luigi Volta, astronomer of the Brera
observatories.
Amongst the Literature Majors: Eligio Possenti, playwright and critic, one
of the first intellectuals to notice Pirandello’s originality. Moreover,
the College hosted Venceslav Ivanov, a poet from Russia, in the years 1926-1936.
Amongst its Rectors of the past are Cesare Angelini, key interpreter of Manzoni’s works and attentive literature critic; and Leopoldo Riboldi, Rector Perpetuus, who gave his contribution to the birth of the very first Department of Political Sciences in Italy by donating 4,200 volumes to the Collegio Borromeo Library.
The majority
of the University of Pavia Faculty (around 250 teachers, researchers and
doctorate students) graduated from Almo Collegio Borromeo.
In 2009 the Women’s Section was opened, so that equal study rights could
be granted to 50 female students.
[traduzione di Alice Bracchi]
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