Inauguration: Umberto Eco - The Island of the Day Before

The Braidense National Library, in collaboration with the Umberto Eco Foundation and the Galileo Museum in Florence, inaugurates the exhibition and public-engagement project dedicated to the work and thought of Umberto Eco on October 2, 2026. The exhibition is build around a presentation of the original images associated with Eco’s novel The Island of the Day Before, drawn from the rare books and scientific materials in his personal collection and from the holdings of the Braidense Library, alongside evocative digital reconstructions and the author’s preparatory works. It offers a journey through time, traversing literature, history, science, and voyages across the South Seas. metaLAB at Harvard and Berlin developed portions of the installaion, including a suite of five visualizations of Eco’s text and an online version of the “metaphor machine” referenced in the novel.**