On August 30, 2019, the Vatican Library hosted a satellite IFLA conference on topics related to education for professionals, exactly 90 years after the first international conference was held in Rome, when the IFLA was officially named and its first statute was established. This paper was presented at the satellite conference to briefly summarize the major events of those memorable years and the Library's history as the background of this extraordinary season for world librarianship. In that period, the Vaticana was experiencing a moment of both institutional and professional prosperity, deeply connected with the events that led to the foundation of the IFLA; these were the same years in which Italy and the city of Rome, in the middle of the Fascist Regime, were hosting, in 1928 and 1929, respectively, the preparatory works and the First World Congress of Libraries and Bibliography, the major event that marks the foundation of the IFLA.