- History
- Promotion
- Location
Cloister, Ex-Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie
Photo by Cristina Baldi, University Library System
The convent of S. Maria delle Grazie, or S. Maria di Mortara, was commissioned by Duke Ercole I d'Este and donated on 5th November 1501 to the Lateran Canonesses of the Order of S. Agostino, from the city of Mortara.
Very little remains intact of what used to be an important element of the city's Erculean Addition.
The church was divided into an internal part, reserved for the cloistered nuns, and an external part that was open to believers; the churchyard and perimeter of the convent were closed in by high walls; the present-day entrance courtyard was a large cloister (Corte dei Carri) with a portico, of which there are still traces, and service buildings.
With the Napoleonic invasion (1798) an unstoppable decline began: first the convent and the internal church, and then the external part, were used as a barracks, a leper colony and a home for the poor; then between the two world wars it finally became a disreputable place of degradation, known in the city as Mortara 70.
When the university acquired it in 1971, the ex-convent was completely dilapidated.
In the 1980s, the new building on the eastern side of the old Corte dei Carri was built, but it was only in 1993 that the project to restore the church as the seat of the centralised Chemistry and Biology Library was launched.
On the 30th June 2005, the ancient church of S. Maria delle Grazie was finally restored to the city as a magnificent place of study and research for the whole community.
The church houses the Chemistry and Biology Library of S. Maria delle Grazie and the ancient Library Collections in Evolutionary Biology and Chemistry.
To find out more
Leonhart Fuchs, De historia stirpium commentarii insignes, Basel, Michael Isengrin, 1542 (Recreation of the illustration). Historical Collection of the Literature and Philosophy Library
This location is part of the permanent cultural tour Stories of books and palaces. Tours of the Unife libraries from the University Library System. (Tour guide.pdf)
Cultural events
17-18 September 2022- Interno Verde: Cloister of the Ex-Convent of S. Maria delle Grazie
11-12 May 2019 - Interno Verde: Cloister of the Ex-Convent of S. Maria delle Grazie
12-13 May 2018 - Interno Verde: Cloister of the Ex-Convent of S. Maria delle Grazie
Guided tours
Virtual Tours
Audiovisual
Reading Room, Chemistry and Biology Library of S. Maria
delle Grazie. Archive of the Unife Communications Office
Ex-Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie
Via Fossato di Mortara, 15
44121 Ferrara
Accessibility
Consult the map of the ground floor and for more information, visit the page for Accessibility of buildings.