The Teresiana Library of Mantua, main cultural centre of the city, is today located in the imposing building that the Jesuits erected at the end of the fifteenth century and where they carried out their activities. The location immediately became an instructional place, in fact in 1625 the Duke Ferdinando inaugurated here a “universal studio”, whose philosophy and theology departments were organized by the Jesuits themselves. This was the start of what became thePalazzo degli Studi, a sort of open factory that grew in the course of the the sixteenth century until the beginning of the seventeenth century. The palace was inaugurated in 1763, the Dukedom having been annexed by Austria many years earlier.