Privacy policy

War strikes, again In May 1940, following Italy’s entry into the Second World War, the Institute was forced to close. In a letter to The Times published in July 1940, Janet Trevelyan spoke of ‘some far distant date’ when ‘in a different Italy’ the British Institute, with its ‘magnificent library might still find work to do.’ And this it did. The Institute reopened formally in 1946, with its Library which had been protected during the war. In 1966, the Library moved to the sixteenth century Palazzo Lanfredini, in apartments generously made available by Sir Harold Acton, just before the Flood (in which many books were lost) – gorgeous rooms on the piano nobile overlooking the River Arno, where it remains to this day.