Acquired in 1970, the Botta Archive is dedicated to Gustavo Botta (1880-1948), a collector and acute art critic, specialised in late 19th-century Lombard painting, as well as a connoisseur of symbolist and decadent French poetry. A poet in his own right, influenced by Claudel, Pascoli and D'Annunzio, Botta was a leading figure in early 20th-century Milanese literary circles in contact with Boito and Fogazzaro and a friend of Futurists such as Lucini, Marinetti and Buzzi. The archive contains a portion of his library comprising about 500 volumes of Italian and French literature and art books, mostly published in the late 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, often with authors' dedications to Botta. Alongside an epistolary section with the letters, also on literary and artistic matters, which he exchanged with 200 correspondents, there are notes and newspaper cuttings, which are very useful in charting his wide-ranging interests, intellectual outlook and sensibility.