La storia

The library of the Alimena, located in the family palace in the historic centre of Cosenza, is a precious cultural heritage. It is unique as it brings together in almost three thousand volumes most of the publications produced between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the field of criminal law and criminology, with an important comparative section, not counting thousands of books in other fields such as history, philosophy, literature.

The Center – prior agreement with the descendants of the Alimena – aims to make the library accessible. It may encourage and cooperate in cataloguing and integrating the Alimena library into the National Library Service, subject to an agreement with the National Library of Cosenza. Furthermore, the specific skills afforded by the Department of Culture, Education, and Society may be useful for the digital preservation at least of the rarest or most important criminal law books. In this context, the Center also aims to study the works of the Alimena, in order to enhance their figures and possibly to find unpublished writings or documents in the library.

The historical catalogue of the Alimena library