The Studium of Perugia, derived from preexisting schools and officially founded in 1308, has enjoyed, between the fourteenth and fifteenth century, an undisputed prestige due to legal teachings.

Historiography told us a lot about the reputation of great teachers and famous students, as well as of the lively events of the city that, still politically independent, was sliding from the municipal government to the aristocratic one.

Among the tragedies of great epidemics, the glories of brave leaders and the authority of fine interpreters, it would be useful to retrace even the most ordinary, everyday aspects of urban and university life, linked, in one way or another, to food.

The Studium of Perugia, from the first decades of his life, crossed its destiny with food, through various and multiple storylines.

One of these is more evident in the archives and appears frequently in the displayed documents: the administration papers of the students of the Collegio of la Sapienza Nuova in which we may find information on the agricultural production of the lands belonging to the institution and on food expenditure for students and staff.

Among Sapienza Nuova administrators we also find the Collegio della Mercanzia and this has meant that a fourteenth century register of the Hospital of Mercanzia is still preserved in the historical archive of the University.

The papers offer us a vision of the nutrition of two particular social groups: sick and hospitalized people and college students, which, with some differences, were still partakers of a community and at least partially privileged nutrition.

In both cases it is an urban food experience, characterized by the availability of food that food distribution authorities used to ensure in the cities, often at the expense of the interests of the countryside.

Furthermore, the teaching of Medicine in University courses involved a scientific and professional attention to food that, since classic Antiquity - as exemplified by Hippocratic writings – was among the interests of those called to take care of the health of individuals and communities.

This is how, among the most significant printed texts kept in our Athenaeum historical archives, we find medical treatises that also deal with food and proper nutrition.