site.btaBulgarian School in Rome Donated Part of Prof. Riccardo Picchio Archives

The “Asen and Iliya Peikov” Bulgarian school in Rome has received part of the archives of Prof. Riccardo Picchio, Veneta Nenkova told BTA. Nenkova is the founder of the Bulgarian school in the Italian capital who also chairs the parallel 43 Cultural Association there.

The donation was made by Krassimir Stantchev, Professor of Slavic Philology at Roma Tre University and founding member of Academia Ambrosiana’s Class of Slavistics, and heirs of the late Slavic linguist Prof. Riccardo Picchio. 

The school has undertaken to catalogue the valuable books and ensure the best place to preserve them for the coming generations. 

Riccardo Picchio is the author of the concept "Slavia", which in the Middle Ages split into "Eastern Slavs" and "Western Slavs" - two simultaneously existing but developing cultures along different paths depending on the different geographical, linguistic and confessional areas to which also include the introduction of the terms Slavia Orthodoxa and Slavia Latina to mean them. 

Considered one of his generation's most influential scholars in the field of Slavic studies, Riccardo Picchio was born in Alessandria, Italy on September 7, 1923.

At the University of Warsaw, he focused on paleoslavistics and later specialized in Bulgarian in Paris and old Russian literature at Andre Mazon. Between 1953 and 1961 he was a professor at the Universities of Florence and Pisa, and then headed the Institute of Slavic Philology at the University of Rome, La Sapienza (1961–65). After a year as a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York, Professor Picchio taught at Yale University for nearly two decades, from 1968 to 1986. After retiring from Yale, he taught for a decade more in Naples, Italy.

Elected foreign Member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 1981. Awarded the St. Cyril and St. Methodius International Award in 1984. Doctor honoris causa of the Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia, 1988.