Libreria Bozzi is the oldest
bookshop
Bookselling is the commercial trading of books which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers, bookdealers, bookpeople, bookmen, or bookwomen. The founding of librar ...
in
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
. The bookshop is situated in via Cairoli in
Genoa
Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Regions of Italy, Italian region of Liguria and the List of cities in Italy, sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of t ...
.
History
The bookshop was founded by a Jewish French refugee from
Briançon
Briançon (, ) is the sole subprefecture of the Hautes-Alpes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in Southeastern France. It is the highest city in France at an altitude of , based on the national definition as a community conta ...
, Antone Beuf (Antonio Beuf), in 1810.
The bookshop was visited in the 19th century by the writers
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle (; 23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal (, ; ), was a 19th-century French writer. Best known for the novels ''Le Rouge et le Noir'' ('' The Red and the Black'', 1830) and ''La Chartreuse de ...
,
Alessandro Manzoni
Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Antonio Manzoni (, , ; 7 March 1785 – 22 May 1873) was an Italian poet, novelist and philosopher. He is famous for the novel '' The Betrothed'' (orig. it, I promessi sposi) (1827), generally ranked among the maste ...
,
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
,
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are ''Moby-Dick'' (1851); '' Typee'' (1846), a r ...
and
Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was th ...
.
After Mario Bozzi's death, the bookshop passed to his son Tonino, who was president of the Italian Booksellers Association for 12 years. To this day, the bookshop incorporates a portion of the ancient cloister of the Church of San Siro, whose columns and even the remains of a Turkish bath are still visible.
See also
*
Books in Italy
Italy is the home of two of the world's biggest publishers of books in terms of revenue: Messaggerie Italiane and Mondadori Libri. Other large publishers include De Agostini Editore, Feltrinelli and the RCS MediaGroup.
History
Early printing ...
External links
Official website
References
19th-century establishments in Italy
Tourist attractions in Genoa
Bozzi
Companies based in Genoa
Antiquarian booksellers
{{retail-company-stub