Letters to and from Domenico Turazza

The collection consists of 41 handwritten letters sent to Domenico Turazza and 6 letters he wrote in reply. Most of the letters concern work on the Tiber River between 1875 and 1876; they also deal with the issue of Rome’s seaport and the use of draining pumps in the reclamation works.
The 47 handwritten letters were found in a collection of miscellaneous documents concerning work on the Tiber River preserved among the works of the Central Library of the University of Padua’s Department of Engineering. One of the letters is a short treatise which in the original volume was bound together with other works, unlike the other 46 letters which were loose in a folder.
Domenico Turazza (1813–1892) was a professor at the University of Padua from late 1842, Rector of the University from 1870–71 and Dean of the Faculty of Science from 1872, he made an essential contribution to the transformation of the Istituto per Ingegneri (Institute for Engineers), which was under the University of Padua, into the Scuola d’applicazione per gli Ingegneri di Padova (Applied School for the Engineers of Padua), which gave rise to the historical faculty which has now become once again the University of Padua’s School Of Engineering.
Turazza, who devoted his studies and career to mathematics and its application in several engineering fields, cultivated at the same time literary interests and studies as an eclectic figure of literature and engineering, an heir to nineteenth-century positivism and humanistic culture.
In addition to his studies in the field of analytical mechanics and hydraulics, he made his contribution to the science of civil engineering and played a significant part in the public debate regarding works on the Tiber in Rome, as is evidenced by the original letters reproduced here.
The discovery of the letters in the Central Library for Engineering is tangible evidence of his contribution in this place which, from its inception, has housed the wealth of books belonging to the University of Padua’s School Of Engineering.
Go to the project report
Go to the bibliographic record of the collection
Go to the bibliographic record of the letter in the miscellany regarding the Tiber River
See also: Valentina Berengo, Domenico Turazza principe degli idraulici, Il Bo (October 15, 2013).