David Laskin – “Why go to the library in Italy when all around you there is fantastic art, exalted architecture, deep history, and intensely passionate people? Because, as I discovered in the course of a rushed but illuminating week dashing from Venice to Rome, Florence, and Milan, the country’s historic libraries contain all of those without the crowds. I hit six libraries in a literary Giro d’Italia. Not once were we shushed or told not to touch…In the madness of late spring at San Marco Square in Venice, amid the hordes pouring in from land and sea, hard by the hissing espresso machines and sizzling panini presses of overpriced cafes, I found the still point of the turning world. I found it in the library. It was 10 in the morning and I was standing, alone and enthralled, on the second floor balcony of the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. Across the Piazzetta rose the Doge’s Palace…”