Abstract

This contribution aims to highlight, through archival research, how foreign languages were taught and learnt at the Ateneo Prealpino (Eng. transl. Prealpine Athenaeum) in Varese, Italy. It looks at the teachers’ curricula and work experience, the students’ background and expectations and, finally, the texts (i.e. grammar books and other didactic material) and the glottodidactic methods, which were employed to teach foreign languages (especially English). The essay also describes the various educational and cultural activities that were organized at the institution, thanks to its founder, Domenico Bulferetti, an anti-fascist scholar and a former pupil of Pascoli, whose personal and professional story intertwined with the cultural, social and economic development of Varese, the ‘garden city’ in northern Italy, between the end of WWII and the 1970s.