Another treasure returned to NSK after decades of missing from its collections
An invaluable copy of Historia antica e moderna, sacra e profana della città di Trieste, a work by a Carmelite monk Irenèo della Croce dating back to the end of the 17th century has been restored to the collections of the National and University Library in Zagreb (NSK) after its misappropriation in the notorious theft in the 1980s of some of NSK’s most valuable collection items.
The NSK Director General Dr Ivanka Stričević received the book at a conference which the Gorizia-based UNESCO club hosted at the Coronini Cronberg Palace to mark the 2025 International Day against Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Property. After being handed the long-missing NSK’s treasure by the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Croatia to the Italian Republic Jasen Mesić, Dr Stričević thanked all the involved institutions for years-long efforts put into the restitution of cultural property, enthusiastically stating – This historical work is finally on its way home.
An invaluable historical source
In Historia, Irenèo della Croce (1625, Trieste – 1713, Venezia), whose secular name was Giovanni Maria Manarutta, chronicled Trieste’s earliest history up until 1100. One of the work’s eight chapters also gives an account of the history of the Istrian peninsula, which makes Historia a valuable resource for research into Croatia’s history. It includes illustrations and one of its opening pages features a portrait of the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph I (1678-1711), also relevant to Croatian history as a ruler of the Kingdom of Hungary and Croatia.
NSK Director General Dr Ivanka Stričević, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Croatia to the Italian Republic Jasen Mesić and Consul General Nevenka Grdinić.
An effective institutional and international cooperation
Returned to the National and University Library in Zagreb based on the analysis of the records available as part of the preserved documentation, the work’s successful restitution was a result of the Library’s longstanding cooperation with the Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media, Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and the Embassy of the Republic of Croatia in the Italian Republic.
In recent years, owing to the coordinated efforts of the Croatian and Italian institutions involved in the restitution of cultural property three other valuable works were returned to NSK. A copy of Selenographia, sive Lunae descriptio…, a famous 1647 century work by Jan Heweliusz (Johannes Hevelius), containing one of the earliest detailed maps of the Moon’s surface, was returned to NSK in 2019, while only a year later, in 2020, NSK received back Trinum magicum sive Secretorum magicorum opus continens, a rare and valuable copy of a 1614 work by Cesare Longino.
The third recently returned work is a volume of the 1761, second edition of Dizionario geografico portatile by a Swiss geographer Isaak Bruckner (1686-1762), which was reincluded in the NSK collections in 2022.
