"Jacopo da Fivizzano" Printing Museum

The "Jacopo da Fivizzano" Printing Museum is located in the historic center of the town of the same name, in Lunigiana, in the 17th-century Palazzo Fantoni-Bononi.

It was conceived by brothers Loris Jacopo and Eugenio Bononi to commemorate the bond between this land and printing; in fact, the poet and politician Giovanni Fantoni from Fivizzano known as Labindo (1755-1807) was born here, and in 1471 Jacopo da Fivizzano printed the first books, known as incunabula, with movable typefaces here in stunning advance of many European capitals and major cities, including London, Brussels and Barcelona. It was also here that Giovanni's nephew Agostino Fantoni invented the first typewriter in 1802 along with the first carbon paper so that he could help his now-blind sister in the practice of writing.

In the palace's hall of honor on July 6, 1848, Grand Duke Leopold II of Tuscany elevated Fivizzano to the rank of "Noble City", and illustrious guests include the poet Giosuè Carducci, an admirer of Labindo, who stayed here in 1887 and called the town of Fivizzano "a pearl lost among the mountains".

The tour is divided into three sections, two of which are devoted to Fivizzano's contribution to the history of printing through letterpress and mechanical writing, while the third section is dedicated to the Lunigiana publisher Maucci, a native of Parana in the nearby municipality of Mulazzo, who in 1892 founded the publishing house of the same name in Barcelona, the most famous in the world in the first half of the 20th century.

The Printing Museum is temporarily closed