© 2011 Congresso della Società Italiana di BIOGEOGRAFIA
Much as I like large libraries and their never ending collections, I also have a passion for (relatively) small places. It started in the corridors of the British Institute of Florence and it became a habit when the London Library gave me a student membership, plus the freedom to touch some of the most precious books I had ever seen. I have worked in a few other ‘small places’, but one stands out for its travel writing collections as well as its stunning locations: the library of the Società Geografica Italiana, housed in Palazzetto Mattei within Rome’s Villa Celimontana, with its elegant rooms filled with travel accounts, diaries, photographs and scientific magazines. If I think of the pleasure of being in a library, that is the places where I want to be.
—Loredana Polezzi, Associate Professor (Reader), Department of Italian, Academic Director, Warwick Venice Centre, University of Warwick; Editorial Board member of Anthem Studies in Travel series