Graffiti of Malatestian Library

The ancient Malatestian Library is a rare treasure, the keeper of a history that we can still bear witness to. Many people don't know that it's possible to find a series of graffiti engraved on the walls of the Aula Nuti, giving us a better historical picture and helping us to reconstruct and interpret five and a half centuries of written and drawn marks.

The engravings of the fifteenth century show the will to leave a trace of their passage in the recently inaugurated library, which has already gained a good enough reputation to attract foreign visitors, which have left numerous signatures like that of Francolino da Padova, who wrote his name on one of the plutei in 1467, and that of the anconitano Francesco Fazioli on that same year.

There are female names as well, like that of Zoanna, which is visible on one of the walls of the Malatestian Library along with its date, 1478.

The period between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th is the richest in testimonials. Among these, that of Alexander Episcopus, the highest ecclesiastical authority who has ever left a trace of his visit. Moreover, the names of Malatesta Novello and Violante were also discovered on the left wall, probably a tribute left by a visitor.

We may also be interested in the initials of the names Alba and Lygdula, though they don't seem to be attributable to female hands; even more remarkable, however, is how often some of these names show up: Lucrezia.

This name appears six times (Lucretia), but when accompanied by the name Flaminio, it becomes incomplete once (Lucret), another time, it appears masculine (Lucrecio), and other times it is limited to one or a few syllables (Lu, Luc, Lucre).

It appears only once accompanied by a letter, on the sill of the sixteenth window to the right: Lucrezia B. Immediate, in this case, is the connection to the famous favorite daughter of Pope Alexander VI, Lucrezia Borgia. We are, in fact, sure she visited Cesena, in January of 1502, where she stayed for one night before leaving for Forlì.

The accounts from that time detail the triumphal welcome that Lucrezia received in Cesena, but there is no trace of a visit to the Library. However, considering that the Pope's daughter used to frequent intellectual circles, and comparing the graffiti in which her name appears followed by the initial of her last name to that of her handwriting in her letter to Pietro Bembo, its not impossibile to think that even an illustrious character like Lucrezia Borgia would have left a trace of her visit in the Malatestian Library.

Moving on to more recent times - if not even the last century - we can see again graffiti reporting names (Roberto, Sancho), toponyms (Sicily) but also a classic "I love you" on one of plutei, or a "W Nizza" on one of windowsills.

We can find more than just engraved text on the Aula Nuti, like thirty figures placed both on the walls and benches: circles, hearts, shields or even a human face drawn on a wall to the left of the door, whose headwear seems to date back to a time not far from that of the Library's opening, which, through time, has been home to the voice of many.

We can therefore conclude that leaving a trace of oneself is a necessity that man has felt since ancient times: through the use of rudimentary tools such as nails, chisels, awls and stilettos he was able to create both abstract and symbolic graffiti, which played the important role of conceptual communication, even before the advent of writing.
Since ancient times it was common to make inscriptions and graffiti, as evidenced by the famous paintings and rock engravings of the Upper Paleolithic.

The prehistoric ones were then followed by many other testimonies over the centuries: from the Phoenicians to the Roman Empire, from the Paleochristian period to the Early Middle Ages. The graffiti that we still see today in the Malatesta Library can be defined as “timeless”, as they have remained unchanged from the moment they were created.
Leaving a trace of ourselves is certainly one of our major expressions, much like leaving our own
signature in a library is indubitably a timeless mark of the self: it goes beyond simply making our presence known, it is an actual form of communication capable of leaving a message.