Sapienza University of Rome

Sapienza University of Rome
Sapienza – Università di Roma
Latin: Studium Urbis
Motto	Il futuro è passato qui
Motto in English	The future is past here or The future has passed here
Established	1303
Type	State-supported
Rector	Prof. Luigi Frati
Admin. staff	10,144
Students	147,000
Location	Rome, Italy
Sports teams	CUS Roma (http://www.cusroma.org/)
Affiliations	PEGASUS
Website	www.uniroma1.it/

The Sapienza University of Rome, officially Sapienza – Università di Roma, also called simply Sapienza formerly known as Università degli studi di Roma "La Sapienza", is a coeducational, autonomous state university in Rome, Italy. It is the largest Italian university by enrollment and the oldest of Rome's three state-funded universities. In Italian, sapienza means "wisdom" or "knowledge".

In 2010 QS World University Rankings ranked the university 190th overall in the world.

History

Former logo of the University of Rome

Sapienza University of Rome was founded in 1303 with the bull In supremae praeminentia dignitatis issued on 20 April 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII, as a Studium for ecclesiastical studies more under his control than the universities of Bologna and Padua.

In 1431 Pope Eugene IV completely reorganized the studium with the bull In supremae, in which he granted masters and students alike the broadest possible privileges and decreed that the university should include the four faculties of Law, Medicine, Philosophy and Theology. He introduced a new tax on wine in order to raise funds for the university; the money was used to buy a palace which later housed the Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza church.

However the University's days of splendour came to an end during the sack of Rome in 1527 when the studium was closed and the professors dispersed; some were killed. Pope Paul III restored the university shortly after his ascension to the pontificate in 1534.

In the 1650s the university became known as Sapienza, meaning wisdom, a title it retains. In 1703 Pope Clement XI purchased some land with his private funds on the Janiculum, where he made a botanical garden, which soon became the most celebrated in Europe through the labours of the Trionfetti brothers.

University students were newly animated during the 19th-century Italian revival. In 1870, La Sapienza stopped being the papal university and became the university of the capital of Italy. In 1935 the new university campus, planned by Marcello Piacentini, was completed. On 27 October 1935 the university became an aggregate of all the institutions of higher learning of university rank in the city of Rome. Since 1935 Sapienza University has been under the control of the Italian Government.

As of the 2007-2008 academic year the Sapienza University of Rome possesses twenty-one faculties and 140,250 students.

Campuses

Entrance to the university's main campus.

Today Sapienza is by far the largest university in Rome, a leading centre of research and academic excellence in all fields of knowledge.

Sapienza University has many campuses in Rome but its main campus is the Città Universitaria, which covers 439,000 square metres near Termini Station. The university has four satellite campuses outside Rome, in Civitavecchia, Latina, Pomezia and Rieti.

In order to cope with the ever-increasing number of applicants, the Rector has approved a new plan to expand the Città Universitaria, reallocate offices and enlarge faculties, as well as create new campuses for hosting local and foreign students, in collaboration with the city of Rome.

The Alessandrina University Library (Biblioteca Universitaria Alessandrina), built in 1667 by Pope Alexander VII, is the main library housing 1.5 million volumes; it has some important collections including collezione ciceroniana, Fondo Festa, etc.

Points of interest

Church of Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, by Borromini, originally a chapel of the Sapienza see.

• Orto Botanico dell'Università di Roma "La Sapienza", a botanical garden
• Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza
• San Pietro in Vincoli: the cloister is part of the Faculty of Engineering

Academics

The university has improved its research programmes in the fields of engineering, natural sciences, biomedical sciences and humanities through the "Sapienza Innovation" programme. Recent cooperation with major British and American universities has resulted in scholarships for Sapienza students through large multicultural exchange programmes, for many faculties.

Admission

In order to cope with the large demand for admission to the university courses, some faculties hold a series of entrance examinations. The "SiOrienta" [2] programme guides students of natural and mathematical sciences as well as the ones belonging the engineering department through the entire admission procedure. The entrance test often decides which candidates will have access to the undergraduate course. For other faculties, the entrance test is only a means through which the administration acknowledges the students' level of preparation. Weak students that haven't passed the test will be enrolled in a number of extra-curriculum preparation courses. Many other faculties don't make use of any entrance test and others use it only as an aptitudinal test.^{citation needed}

Controversies

In 1990, Pope John Paul II faced small protests in his only visit to La Sapienza.^{citation needed}

On January 15th 2008 the Vatican cancelled a planned visit to La Sapienza University by Pope Benedict XVI who was to speak at the university ceremony launching the 2008 academic year due to protests by some students and professors. The title of speech should have been 'The Truth Makes Us Good and Goodness is Truth'. Some students and professors protested in reaction to a 1990 speech that Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) gave in which he, in their opinion, endorsed the actions of the church against Galileo in 1633.

Other controversies include the award given to Muammar Gaddafi on June 10th 2009 (Medaglia d'Oro dell'Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza") and the "Parentopoli scandal".

People

Law & Social Science

• Carlo Costamagna
• Roberto Forges Davanzati, political science
• Cardinal Mazarin
• Mario Oriani-Ambrosini
• Antonio Salandra

Architecture

• Ernesto Basile
• Bruno Zevi

Sciences

• Lucio Bini and Ugo Cerletti, psychiatrists
• Corrado Böhm, computer scientist
• Daniel Bovet, pharmacologist, Nobel prize winner (1957)
• Benedetto Castelli, mathematician
• Andrea Cesalpino, physician and botanist
• Federigo Enriques, mathematician
• Clelia Giacobini, microbiologist
• Maria Montessori, physician and paedagogist
• Paola S. Timiras, biologist
• Barnaba Tortolini, mathematician
• Vito Volterra, mathematician

Physics

• Via Panisperna boys:
  • Enrico Fermi, Nobel prize winner (1938)
  • Edoardo Amaldi
  • Oscar D'Agostino
  • Ettore Majorana
  • Bruno Pontecorvo
  • Franco Rasetti
  • Emilio G. Segrè, Nobel prize winner (1959)
• Giovanni Battista Beccaria
• Giovanni Ciccotti
• Giovanni Jona-Lasinio
• Luciano Maiani
• Domenico Pacini
• Giorgio Parisi
• Antonio Signorini
• Nicola Cabibbo, President of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences

Humanities

• Daria Galateria, writer and translator
• Luigi Ferri, philosopher
• Piero Boitani, literary critic, writer and academic
• Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina, jurisconsult
• Silvia Berti, historian
• Lazarus Buonamici, renaissance humanist
• Umberto Cassuto, Hebrew language and Bible scholar
• Marcel Danesi, language scientist
• Carlo Innocenzio Maria Frugoni, poet
• Count Angelo de Gubernatis, orientalist
• Predrag Matvejevic, writer and academic
• Santo Mazzarino, leading historian of ancient Rome and ancient Greece
• Giuseppe Tucci, orientalist
• Mario Liverani, orientalist
• Paolo Matthiae, director of the archeological expedition of Ebla
• Antonio Nibby, archaeologist
• Giuliano Amato, law professor and twice Prime Minister of Italy
• Diego Laynez, second general of the Society of Jesus;
• Giulio Mazzarino, politician and cardinal
• Giulio Salvadori, literary critic and poet
• Giuseppe Scaraffia, literary critic
• Ugo Spirito, philosopher
• Giuseppe Ungaretti, poet
• Bernardino Varisco, philosopher
• Musine Kokalari, Albanian writer

Alumni

• Marco Abbondanza, medical doctor and eye surgeon
• Severino Antinori, embryologist
• Sergio Balanzino, ambassador
• Pietro Belluschi, architect
• Bernardo Bertolucci, film director
• Maurizio Cheli, astronaut
• Domenico Comparetti, classic literature scholar
• Gabriele D'Annunzio, poet
• Mario Draghi, governor of the Bank of Europe
• Cristina Ali Farah, writer
• Carlo Fea, archaeologist
• Massimiliano Fuksas, architect
• Romaldo Giurgola, architect
• Umberto Guidoni, astronaut
• Antonio Monda, film director
• Maria Montessori, educator
• Luca di Montezemolo, CEO
• Scott O'Dell, novelist
• Charles Ponzi, con man
• Gian Vittorio Rossi, poet and philologist
• Crescenzio Sepe, cardinal
• Abdirashid Ali Shermarke, president and prime minister of Somalia

See also

• ESDP-Network
• List of medieval universities

External links

• (Italian) University of Rome La Sapienza Website