The Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere is an Italian academy founded by Napoleon in 1797. [1] At the time of the foundation the Istituto was an institution of the Cisalpine Republic and its name was Istituto Nazionale della Repubblica Cisalpina.
Napoléon Bonaparte was a French statesman and military leader of Italian descent who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the French Revolutionary Wars. He was Emperor of the French as Napoleon I from 1804 until 1814 and again briefly in 1815 during the Hundred Days. Napoleon dominated European and global affairs for more than a decade while leading France against a series of coalitions in the Napoleonic Wars. He won most of these wars and the vast majority of his battles, building a large empire that ruled over much of continental Europe before its final collapse in 1815. He is considered one of the greatest commanders in history, and his wars and campaigns are studied at military schools worldwide. Napoleon's political and cultural legacy has endured as one of the most celebrated and controversial leaders in human history.
The Cisalpine Republic was a sister republic of France in Northern Italy that lasted from 1797 to 1802.
Contents
The first location of the Istituto was Bologna and the academy was bound to include no more than 60 members. The first 31 were appointed by Napoleon in 1802 and the first president was Alessandro Volta, who started serving in 1803. [2] The Istituto was concerned with Natural Sciences, Political Sciences and Arts.
Bologna is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy, at the heart of a metropolitan area of about one million people.
Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta was an Italian physicist, chemist, and a pioneer of electricity and power, who is credited as the inventor of the electric battery and the discoverer of methane. He invented the Voltaic pile in 1799, and reported the results of his experiments in 1800 in a two-part letter to the President of the Royal Society. With this invention Volta proved that electricity could be generated chemically and debunked the prevalent theory that electricity was generated solely by living beings. Volta's invention sparked a great amount of scientific excitement and led others to conduct similar experiments which eventually led to the development of the field of electrochemistry.
Upon requests of its members, in 1810 Napoleon changed the name of the Istituto in Istituto Reale di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. Its new location was Palazzo Brera in Milan, where it is still located nowadays. Additional sections were then added in Bologna, Verona, Padua and Venice.
Palazzo Brera or Palazzo di Brera is a monumental palace in Milan, in Lombardy in northern Italy. It was a Jesuit college for two hundred years. It now houses several cultural institutions including the Accademia di Brera, the art academy of the city, and its gallery, the Pinacoteca di Brera; the Orto Botanico di Brera, a botanical garden; an observatory, the Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera; the Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere, a learned society; and an important library, the Biblioteca di Brera.
Verona is a city on the Adige river in Veneto, Italy, with 258,108 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third largest in northeast Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona covers an area of 1,426 km2 (550.58 sq mi) and has a population of 714,274 inhabitants. It is one of the main tourist destinations in northern Italy, because of its artistic heritage and several annual fairs, shows, and operas, such as the lyrical season in the Arena, the ancient amphitheater built by the Romans.
Padua is a city and comune in Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 214,000. The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE) which has a population of c. 2,600,000.
At Napoleon's fall the Istituto passed under the administration of the Austrian government and then, since 1859 until today, under the administration of the Italian government.
