Welcome to APIA, the Academies Project at the Italian Academy. This is the first website entirely dedicated to the history of scholarly and artistic academies from the Renaissance onward. Interdisciplinary by nature, academies were centers of knowledge production and research, and gathering places for erudite thinkers, literati and scientists. The goal of APIA is to organize scattered data about academies, their members and their output; to create a network of scholars and readers; to enhance the contemporary conversation about the significance and continued relevance of academies; and to build on their lively patrimony of intellectual innovation, discovery, and creativity.

Free access to complete digitized books and manuscripts allows you to read texts by individuals affiliated with academies, as well as bibliographies and a rich trove of related information. Interdisciplinary by nature, academies were centers of knowledge production and research, and gathering places for erudite thinkers, literati and scientists.

APIA is a project of Columbia University’s Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, generously supported by The Samuel H. Kress Foundation. As this Virtual Library is developed, questions can be directed to aa2481@columbia.edu.