The Biblioteca Riccardiana is an Italian public library under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture, located inside the Palazzo Medici Riccardi at 10 Via de’ Ginori in Florence, in the neighborhood comprising the Mercato Centrale and the Basilica di San Lorenzo. Its main feature is preserving books collected by members of the Riccardi family and making them available in the very same rooms that were originally dedicated to that purpose. So, still today the library boasts the magnificent bookshelves, neatly carved and gilded, that create the atmosphere of a late-seventeenth-century patrician library, whose main features have all been kept intact.
Adjacent to this library is the Biblioteca Moreniana; although attached to one another, these libraries have a different history. They are also two separate entities from an administrative point of view, as the Moreniana is under the aegis of the Florence City Council.
A history of the library and its rooms
The Biblioteca Riccardiana is housed on the back side of what was originally the Palazzo Medici (later and still today known as Palazzo Medici-Riccardi). The palace was purchased by Gabriello Riccardi (1606-1675) in March 1659. The entrance to the library is on Via de’ Ginori.
Replacing the family of the Tuscan grand dukes as owners of a building as rich in history as Palazzo Medici was a sort of consecration for the Riccardi, who came from humble origins and had only recently attained their noble status. At a time when the Riccardi’s patrimony was inferior only to that of the Medici, Francesco di Cosimo (1648-1719) decided to invest the formidable sum of 115,000 “scudi” to restore, enlarge, and decorate the palace that his family had just bought. That led first to a complete change in the Riccardi’s life and eventually to their financial collapse.
Marquis Francesco decided to readapt some rooms on the back side of the palace (on what is today Via de’ Ginori) to create a sort of “private museum” bringing together the various family collections that had hitherto been preserved in the family house on Via Gualfonda (in the building that is now 4 Via Valfonda in Florence). Those collections consisted of medallions, bronzes, gems, cameos, ivories, and works of goldsmithery as well as the library that Francesco’s great-uncle Riccardo Romolo (1558-1612) had started putting together. The works commissioned by Francesco went on for about thirty years; they were temporarily stopped around 1670 (to purchase some adjacent apartments necessary to enlarge the palace) and then resumed at a fast pace. In 1689, when those works (including the façade on the Via Larga) were not finished yet, the gallery painted by Luca Giordano was inaugurated. The occasion was an event that involved the whole city, that is, the lavish celebrations for the wedding between Ferdinando de’ Medici (the grand duke’s eldest son) and Violante Beatrice of Bavaria.
The artists in charge of restoring and enlarging the palace were – in chronological order – Ferdinando Tacca, Pier Maria Baldini, and Giovanni Battista Foggini. The latter was also entrusted with designing the interiors, while it fell to Luca Giordano (one of the most admired painters of the time, nicknamed “Speedy Luca” because of his ability at painting quickly) to decorate the ceilings of the main areas, i.e., the hall and the library.