Vatican digitizes thousands of rare manuscripts

The Vatican City State is continuing its tradition of world heritage storage and modern technologies of digitization are of great help here, reports Newtonew.

The Vatican Digital Library is a joint project of the Vatican Apostolic Library and the company NTT Data, which provides services in digitization, processing and reproduction of rare manuscripts.

The project will last for a couple of decades: during this period it is planned to digitize 80,000 exhibits. First of all work is carried out on the rare and very valuable manuscripts. For humanity it is an increased chance not to lose the treasures of world culture and for an ordinary viewer like you and me – to finally see those works which have been in the closed rooms of the library so far.

Now the collection counts up to 5600 digitized manuscripts – Borgianni and Barberini collections, collections of printed books, drawings and reproductions. "Circles of Hell" by Botticelli can be found here.

All images can be downloaded with watermarks in medium resolution; and on the site they are exposed for detailed study.