Rome, University of

one of Europe’s oldest universities. Founded in 1303, the university frequently experienced periods of decline while under the financial and administrative jurisdiction of the Roman popes. It became a major educational and scientific center after Italy’s unification in 1870. The following individuals have worked at the university: the chemist S. Cannizzaro, the geometer E. Beltrami, the mathematician and mechanics specialist T. Levi-Civita, the physicist E. Fermi, the geometer F. Severi, the physicist E. Amaldi, and the historian R. Bianchi-Bandinelli.

In 1974 the University of Rome included the following ten faculties: jurisprudence, political science, economics and commerce, statistics, demography, and actuarial science, letters and philosophy, mathematics, physics, and natural science, pharmacy, education, engineering, and architecture. The university also had schools of aerospace engineering and librarianship and archivists, as well as a computer center. The university library (founded 1661) contains approximately 900,000 books. In the 1973–74 academic year, 94,000 students were enrolled, and the teaching staff included about 300 professors.

A special building known as the Sapienza was built for the university by the architect Giacomo della Porta in approximately 1575. Since then, the University of Rome has often been called the Sapienza in official documents. A new complex of buildings was constructed in 1935.