Biblioteca Teresiana

The Imperial Royal Library of Mantua was opened to the public on March 30, 1780, in accordance with the vast program of secularization and reform of cultural and educational institutions launched in 1749 by Maria Theresa of Austria.

In fact, the foundation of a homogeneous structure of public libraries organized throughout the territory corresponded to the enlightened policy of the Habsburg empire, they were almost always set in the conventual buildings of the Society of Jesus, suppressed in 1773, with the Pertusati Library in Milan at the top, which later, in 1786, took the name of Braidense, and the University Library of Pavia.