Rome - The Library of the Popes has just signed an agreement with the japanese company Ntt Data, which will be in charge of digitalizing the whole book collection of the Vatican. It consists of around 82.000 manuscripts, for a total 40 million pages, which will be archived one by one thanks to special scanners and protection systems designed specifically for it.

The first phase of the project, which aims at transferring 3.000 copies in digital format within four years, will begin with some of the most important masterpieces. Of course, it could not be complete without the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, along with its illustrations by the great florentine artist Sandro Botticelli. The master designed them upon Lorenzo de'Medici's request around 1490, and they are among the most studied drawings.

In addition to it, the Bibbia Urbinate commissioned by Federico da Montefeltro and the Virgilio Vaticano will be digitalized. The latter is one of the few classical text with illustrations that survived through the ancient times and it was largely consulted by Raffaello Sanzio.
The agreement with Ntt is part of a major project that the Vatican Library has already started, with the intention of creating more than 15.000 digital copies by 2018.