WHEN in ROME

DEREK C. BLASBERG touches down in THE ETERNAL CITY and talks to fashion's PHILOSOPHER KING, luxury maverick BRUNELLO CUCINELLI, about his new film, finding MEANING in the CHAOS of the MOMENT, and why your real LEGACY is the way you LIVE your LIFE

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In 1604, Angelo Rocca—Augustinian bishop, humanist scholar, and first head of the Vatican printing house—founded one of Europe's first public libraries, the Biblioteca Angelica, in Rome. From the street, it looks like a nondescript building tucked beside the Basilica of Sant'Agostino, a small church famous for housing a Caravaggio painting of the Madonna and Child greeting barefoot pilgrims. But past a turnstile in its fluorescent-lit entryway and up a flight of worn-in wooden stairs, the view is awe-inspiring. Soaring walls of antiquated texts rise in tiered, intricately carved bookshelves, and the air is rich with the unmistakable odor of weathered leather and parchment. Ah, yes—the sweet scent of literature.

It's early December, and I'm here by myself. A kind librarian explains that in an era when books were locked behind church doors, opening a library to anyone who could read was a revolutionary act. In broken Italian, I sweet-talk her into letting me hold an early edition of Dante's Inferno, flipping through its thin, yellowed, crisp pages—a reminder that before screens and servers, knowledge lived in the weight of paper, ink, and delicately hand-painted gilding.

I've been a tourist in Rome at least a dozen times and feel like I've barely scratched its travertine surface. I'd never even heard of this library! The insider tip came from a man who knows a thing or two about books: Brunello Cucinelli. It was he who suggested I visit Biblioteca Angelica while I was in town for the premiere of