Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana

The Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana is among the oldest libraries in the world and holds collections that go back to the time of Cosimo the Elder (1389–1464). Its present premises, adjacent to the Basilica of San Lorenzo, were constructed to designs by Michelangelo Buonarroti and inaugurated in 1571. The Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana preserves what is perhaps the most important source ever written on the Nahua or Aztec world at the time of the conquest: the Florentine Codex (Mediceo Palatino 218–220), compiled around 1577 by a group of Indigenous scribes and artists working under the direction of the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún at the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco (Mexico).