The core of the collection comprises approximately 200 Western and 100 Eastern manuscripts, 2,000 autograph manuscripts and 270 incunabula – of which one tenth are rare or unique items. There are also several thousand original prints dating from between the 16^th and the 20^th centuries.

According to Hans E. Braun, the first Director of the Foundation, the collection can be broken down as follows:

Major works within a given context. For example:

• the Egyptian Books of the Dead (1000 – 500 BC) and Egyptian funeral practices (inscriptions on mastaba tombs, statues of gods, Canopic jars and Fayoum mummy portraits)
• Homeric themes on 6^th-century jars (Amazonomachy, Helen’s abduction by Menelaus) or terracotta reliefs from the 1^st century BC (Penelope’s distress, Ulysses’ return)
• works by Dante, including three 14^th-century manuscripts of the Commedia and a remarkable series of incunabula (the 1472 editio princeps by Johann Numeister, Foligno; the great illustrated edition of 1481)
• 16^th-century printed books, including the octavo Aldine of 1502, and folio editions from the 18^th and 19^th centuries
• translations of major works as well as original sources (Brunetto Latin’s Tesoro, manuscripts by Virgil, Thomas Aquinas and Bernard of Clairvaux); poems by Guinizelli, Cavalcanti…
• the Faust myth, with in prime place the 400 autograph verses  of Goethe’s Faust II. There are also over 1,000 legal and pirated first editions and translations; other writings on the same theme (Marlowe); drawings  by Füssli and Delacroix; modern lithographs; an autograph score by Liszt