Legend has it that the library was founded at the same time as the School o the Pia Casa della Sapienza, around he middle of the 1400s, thanks to a donation from Cardinal Niccolò Forteguerri (the author of the burlesque poem il Ricciardetto). He was one of the most famous personalities of the city, so much so that he was included in the Pantheon in piazza San France sco (vs5), and there is a statue of him in the nearby piazza dello Spirito Santo. The Sapienza School was a two year program and was completely free of tuition. Beyond imparting primary instruction, it gave twelve city students from difficult backgrounds the means to support themselves during university studies. During the pestilence in the I second half of the 1400s, when many people carne to Pistoia seeking refuge (vs14) the Pia Casa hosted the University of Pisa in its rooms. The building that today houses the iibrary and that face on to the piazza with a Renaissance style colonnade is not the one that originally housed the Casa della Sapienza. it was in fact built by the Florentine architect Nanni Unghero (vs9). during the 1500s in place of an older construction. After Unghero's modifications the school was moved here and became the Collegio Forteguerri.
The real foundation date for the library is 1696, the year in which the Grand Duke decreed that the city government must finance a public library (vi) connected with the College.
Throughout the nineteenth century the library shared space with the school which had become well-known as the Regio Liceo Forteguerri that counted among its teachers the poet Giosuè Carducci (as is recalled in the plaque over the portico). Only in 1923 when the school was moved to the rooms of the former monastery of San Giovanni in Corso was the-palazzo della Sapienza given over completely to the public library, thus losing its function as a collection of scholastic books. The library was reopened to the public in 1926.

(n.) refers to the number of the file-card (s.i.) means see information inside

The Library's Collection
Today the Biblioteca Comunale Forteguerriana preserves rare early books and precious manuscripts among which about thirty of the two hundred codexes that the Pistoian humanist Sozomeno left the City in 1458. Over the course of centuries, donations have enriched the library's patrimony and have helped to focus its specialization as a historical library. The collections, all available for consultation, include the ones left by Fernando Martini (of the Pistoian Academy of Science, Letters and Art), Alberto Chiappelli, Alberto Montemagni, as well as the Macciò and Puccini collections (vs21) Over time the new accessions have favored the humanistic disciplines.