Archive School

Since 2008, the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, has organized an annual course, held by Dr. Lothar Sickel, as an introduction to working in the archives and libraries of Rome. The one-week course, taking place each year in February or March, provides a practical learning offer for handling primarily early modern archive materials dating from the period between the 15th and the 19th centuries. It combines practical reading and research exercises of original documents with visiting and using the most important archives in Rome – including the Archivio Segreto Vaticano.

The detection and understanding of unpublished documents is essential for art history research but is rarely taught as part of university teaching in art history. By holding the course, the Bibliotheca Hertziana offers training in an elementary subject, confirmed by the consistently high demand.

Target group

Applications for attendance are open to German-speaking students of art history (higher semesters), and particularly final year candidates researching a topic relating to Italian art history. The participants’ project-specific interests will be taken into account when designing the course program. Conditions for taking part are good knowledge of Latin and fluency in Italian.

Call for application

The call for application to the course takes place once a year for October and is published on the website of the Bibliotheca Hertziana under Opportunities, as well as via subject-specific mailing lists and websites.