It played a vital role in linking the culture of Italy with that of other European countries in the 19th century, and also became one of the chief reference points for the Risorgimento movement.

It began as a reading room that provided leading European periodicals for Florentines and visitors from abroad in a setting that encouraged conversation and the exchange of ideas.

Giacomo Leopardi and Alessandro Manzoni frequented the Gabinetto Vieusseux when they were in Florence, as did Stendhal, Schopenhauer, J. F. Cooper, Thackeray, Dostoevsky, George Gissing,[1] Mark Twain, Émile Zola, André Gide, Kipling, Aldous Huxley and D. H. Lawrence.

Its work continued in the 20th century under the direction of distinguished men of letters such as Bonaventura Tecchi, Eugenio Montale and, for forty years, Alessandro Bonsanti, who set up three new departments: the Laboratory for the conservation of books damaged in the 1966 flood, the Centro Romantico, specializing in studies in romanticism and the 19th century, and the Archivio Contemporaneo, now named after Bonsanti, which houses manuscripts, private papers and private libraries donated by leading figures in 20th-century culture.

The institute also organizes meetings, conferences and exhibitions throughout the year; in 1995 the quarterly review founded by Bonsanti in 1966 “Antologia Vieusseux” (new series) resumed publication.

Currently the Archives house more than 130 “funds,” or collections related to individual authors, in total more than 500,000 documents and 70,000 volumes added by donation, deposit, and loan.

Another data base has been organized for the gathering of works of art (drawings, prints, paintings, and sculpture) in the collections of the Contemporary Archives.

The Restoration Laboratory was opened in 1968 on the premises of Palazzo Acciaiuoli della Certosa, alongside the framework that developed after the November 4, 1966 flood caused enormous damage to the Gabinetto G.P.

In the early seventies, with the return of the full activity of the Gabinetto Vieusseux, the laboratory began to occupy itself with all other needs for the Institute’s restoration, apart from those damaged in the flood.

The Centro Romantico, using the documents preserved at the Institute as a point of departure, promotes research and initiatives about European society in the 19th century.

This dissemination of information, the vast number of conversations through letters from different countries, the network of correspondence among booksellers, the circulation of publications and reviews, the documentation of scientific progression, the reading public, the illumination of social and economic issues, and the attention to visitors from abroad were all fundamental for the initiatives that led to the creation of the Gabinetto Vieusseux; they also took note of a great number of influential non-political characters in Florence and Tuscany’s recent history.