Officially created only in February 2010, the "Paolo and Ornella Ricca" Museum of the School History of Macerata is the result of a broader project, which started years ago by now, and whose forerunners are represented by the exhibitions: Tra banchi e quaderni (‘Between desks and notebooks’), curated by Paolo Ricca and mounted at the Antichi Forni (‘Old furnaces’) in Macerata from September 27th, through October 27th, 2007; and the exhibition Tra i banchi di scuola. Vita scolastica italiana tra Otto e Novecento (‘On school-desks. Italian daily school-life, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries), curated by Roberto Sani and mounted at the former Classical High-School in Civitanova Marche from July 10th to September 6th, 2009.

Following the public success of the exhibition of 2007 and of its replica staged in Civitanova Marche Alta in 2009, in our University as well as among the civic and political authorities of the territory, the awareness arose that it was necessary to arrange a permanent exhibition space, in which to make available to the public, to the citizens and especially to the younger generations, all the school materials that for years had been gathered with attention and passion by Paolo and Ornella Ricca. The high sense of civic and marked cultural sensitivity showed by Mr and Mrs Ricca had allowed to fulfil such an extraordinary goal, thanks to their decision - in 2009 - to donate their collection to the University with the aim to establish a public museum about the history of the school. This farsighted act of generosity has given start to a virtuous mechanism of acquisitions that - from 2009 to present - has allowed the Museum to get hold (in different ways: by donation, deposit, loan) of several book collections and archival funds of similar qualitative nature - though not as quantitatively impressive as the original Ricca collection.