In the collective imagination Margaret of Savoy embodied, more than any other, an exemplary model of sovereignty in which the awareness and pride of belonging to one of Europe’s oldest royal families were combined with closeness to the people, interest in the needs of the most needy and a lively passion for culture. In this regard, the conspicuous collection of books collected by the Queen over a lifetime witnesses the fascination that the intellectual world had on her, as well as the eclectic taste of a curious woman, a lover of Italian and European literature, the figurative arts, poetry, music and the most innovative aspects of the society of her time.
After Umberto’s death in December 1900, Margherita’s books left the Quirinale to follow her to the new Roman residence, Palazzo Piombino in Via Veneto, specially bought by Victor Emmanuel III for his mother. Here also converged the books that had formed the Royal Library of Monza, following the palace’s dismissal in 1919. In 1926, after Margaret’s death, her book collection with more than 12,000 volumes largely returned to Turin from the palace in Via Veneto, sold at the will of Victor Emmanuel III.
The Royal Library remained, even after the transfer of the capital, the official place of preservation of the books belonging to members of the royal family; only a small nucleus, of about three hundred volumes, remained in Rome and was annexed to the Library of the Ministry of the Royal House, at the Quirinale.
The Turin collection was sorted and catalogued; however, the limited storage space of the Royal Library did not allow an adequate arrangement, so in 1967 the book collection was transferred to the National University Library of Turin, with the exception of a selection of about three hundred and fifty volumes, chosen for the particular value of the bindings and for the presence of autograph dedications by well-known personalities.
The books transferred to the National Library were divided and placed by subject, according to the classifications already assigned by the Queen herself. They then underwent several inventory revisions and an almost complete computer cataloguing on the National Library Catalogue, culminating in an in-depth research and study day accomplished in 2018 by Giorgia Sannibale on the Ex libris Regina Margherita.
In the course of 2022, the entire library collection – consisting of 13,560 volumes – was the target of an ambitious new project, promoted by the National Library in collaboration with Culturalpe s.c.: it aimed at the preservation, enhancement and free use of the collection, through the inventory revision and computer cataloguing of all the works included in it.
The aim was their transfer from the repositories to the Library’s Exhibition Hall, according to a permanent arrangement designed to promote the widest and most transversal knowledge possible, through unprecedented narrative lines and the aid of multimedia apparatuses integrated with the Library’s digital heritage offerings.
In this way, all visitors are invited to walk among the shelves of the library collection, and thanks to the creation of special exhibition bookshelves, they can see several dozen volumes, thus discovering the literary tastes and cultural relations that the sovereign knew how to cultivate throughout her life.
What is most impressive is the enormous potential of the material: not only because of the richness of the numerous bindings specially made for the Queen and the elegance of the guard papers protecting the texts, often decorated with daisies in homage to her, but also the practical use of this collection. In fact, alongside precious texts there are numerous ‘common’ books, which could be found in the average reader’s library today.
It is in fact a collection that has been carefully read by the Queen, as evidenced by the numerous handwritten notes: in her own handwriting, she specifies, for example, that she would like to take a book with her to Bordighera, or that she has begun to read it, or even that she finds it interesting.
And so autograph notes, dedications, bindings, together with ex libris (in fact, those of Victor Emmanuel II, Umberto I and his daughter-in-law Elena also appear in the Library) help the scholar and the contemporary visitor to immerse themselves and revive the myth of a sovereign who knew how to unite Italy from North to South and from top to bottom, from literary circles to the crowds.