The Pontaniana Academy, the oldest in Italy, was founded in Naples in 1443 at Castel Nuovo as a circle of scholars led by Antonio Beccadelli (“Panormita”) and supported by Alfonso V of Aragon, hence its original name, “Alfonsina.” Upon Beccadelli’s death (1471), the presidency passed to Giovanni Pontano, who moved the meetings to his residences and to the small temple on Via Tribunali, focusing the studies on philology, the classics, theology, geography, and the discoveries of the time.

After Pontano’s death (1503), the Academy retained its name and was led by Pietro Summonte, Girolamo Carbone, Jacopo Sannazaro, and Scipione Capece. With the transformation of Naples into a Spanish viceroyalty, it maintained high intellectual prestige (Summonte’s famous letter to Marcantonio Michiel from 1524 is well-known), but it was eventually shut down in 1542.

It was revived on March 4, 1808, as the Pontaniana Society, with Vincenzo Cuoco as president (followed by Domenico Sansone and Giovan Battista Gagliardi), organized into three classes (which became five in 1817). In 1825, King Francis I restored its title as the Pontaniana Academy, merging it with the Sebezia Society.

In 1892, Benedetto Croce joined the academy and later became its president. During the Fascist era, the academy avoided dissolution by merging with the Royal Society. The library was destroyed by the Germans in 1943, but in 1944 the Allies ordered its restoration, led by Maria Bakunin, among others. With Presidential Decree No. 668 of 1972, the Academy revised its Statute and has continued to publish its annual Proceedings to this day.