The Accademia dei Concordi is one of the oldest academies in Italy still active today. In 2025 it celebrated 445 years. It was born around 1580 on the initiative of Count Gaspare, or Gasparo, Campo, who liked to gather the city’s writers and scholars in his own palazzo. The name evokes the concord, the harmony, meant to unite its members. In the 18th century a reform relaunched it as a centre of study, in the age of figures such as Girolamo Silvestri and Cristina Roccati. And so a private salon grew into an institution that has crossed almost half a millennium.
A palazzo and a pact
The academy’s palazzo on the main square was designed by the Rovigo architect Sante Baseggio and completed in 1814 (in 1815, according to the Accademia itself). Since 1836 an agreement known as the ‘Gnocchi contract’ has governed the relationship between the Accademia, a private body, and the city council. The arrangement is still in force after almost two centuries, and it makes the Concordi library Rovigo’s civic library. It is a rare case: a private academy looking after the books of an entire city. Ever since, books and city have walked together.
Today the library holds 312,801 items, according to the 2025 Report. Among them are manuscripts, illuminated codices and incunabula. Its most celebrated treasure is the Bibbia Istoriata Padovana, an illustrated 14th-century Bible. On those shelves lies Rovigo’s written memory: a heritage few would guess at behind the façade on the square.
The treasures of the picture gallery
The picture gallery is the Accademia’s other great treasure. It was officially founded in the first half of the 19th century and grew through bequests from members and Rovigo families. Together with the collection of the Seminario Vescovile, the bishop’s seminary, it numbers some 280 works, now displayed at Palazzo Roverella. Among the masterpieces are two works by Giovanni Bellini: the ‘Madonna and Child’, from around 1475, and ‘Christ Carrying the Cross’. Alongside them stand Palma il Vecchio’s ‘Madonna and Child with Saints Jerome and Helena’ and Tiepolo’s ‘Portrait of Antonio Riccobono’. The names alone tell you the calibre of the collection.
