The Academies Project at the Italian Academy

The first website entirely dedicated to the history of scholarly and artistic academies from the Renaissance onward

Interdisciplinary by nature, academies were centers of knowledge production and research, and gathering places for erudite thinkers, literati and scientists. The goal of APIA is to organize scattered data about academies, their members and their output; to create a network of scholars and readers; to enhance the contemporary conversation about the significance and continued relevance of academies; and to build on their lively patrimony of intellectual innovation, discovery, and creativity.

APIA is a project of Columbia University’s Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, generously supported by The Samuel H. Kress Foundation and The Warburg Institute. 

This page and the APIA research project are being redesigned. The new site will offer free access to complete digitized books and manuscripts, allowing visitors to read texts by individuals affiliated with academies, as well as bibliographies and a rich trove of related information. Visitors can... 

read full books, browsing through a growing selections of books on Italian academies: whole books from The Warburg Institute, Yale's Beinecke Library, Columbia University Libraries, the Museo Galileo, and from selected academies;

review a lively variety of emblems of the Italian academies, derived from an 18th-century manuscript held by the Casanatense library in Rome;

explore an alphabetical inventory of all Italian academies in recent centuries; 

read Michele Maylender's history of Italian Academies in five fundamental volumes;

learn about pertinent volumes held in the British Library; and

access databases on French, British, and Spanish academies.

Questions can be directed to [email protected]