The world's most extraordinary libraries
It is a measure of how important books are to us that some of the most beautiful buildings and interiors in the world are libraries. For the centuries before the invention of the printing press, when every book had to be copied by hand, they were our most valuable possessions, and even now, when digitisation and cheap printing make them readily available to everyone, we still treasure the places where we read and study. This collection of libraries takes in everything from spectacular Baroque monasteries to the airy, serene reading rooms of the present day, embracing the best of all spaces to get lost in a book.
Valentin Wolf/imageBROKER/REX/Shutterstock1/20Strahov Monastery Library, Prague, Czech Republic
Prague's Strahov Monastery was founded in 1143 by the Order of Canons Regular of Prémontré. It underwent major rebuilding throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, which included the creation of this library, the Theological Hall, in the 1780s. The ceiling fresco by Anton Maulbertsch is a depiction of "The Intellectual Progress of Mankind", from Adam and Eve to the classical philosophers, along with saints and historical figures associated with the abbey. The hall holds more than 42,000 volumes.
Michael Weber/imageBROKER/REX/Shutterstock2/20Stadtbibliothek Stuttgart, Germany
In 2011, the Stuttgart municipal library moved from its previous home in a former royal palace to this new building designed by Korean architect Young Yi in Mailänder Platz. The building is a grey cube on the outside, but glows blue in the evening. Its openness to people of all nations is symbolised by the inscriptions on the outer walls: the word "Library" in silver letters is in English on the west wall, in German on the north, in Korean on the East and in Arabic on the south.
REX/Shutterstock3/20Biblioteca Joanina, Coimbra, Portugal
The library of the University of Coimbra dates to the 18th century and the reign of Portugal's King John V, for whom the building is named. It houses around 200,000 volumes within its Baroque interiors, including treasures from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. The library is also famous for its colony of bats, who consume insects that might otherwise damage the rare texts.
Michel Euler/AP/REX/Shutterstock4/20Bibliothèque Richelieu-Louvois, Paris, France
Part of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, this library was originally the royal library, moved to these premises by Louis XIV when the Louvre ran out of storage capacity in the 1660s. The building was once the palace of Cardinal Mazarin, the Chief Minister of France under Louis XIV and an insatiable book collector. He bequeathed his collection to the state upon his death in 1661, and the library later expanded into the neighbouring buildings. The famous Labrouste Reading Room was designed in the 1860s by Pierre-François-Henri Labrouste, using 16 iron pillars inspired by Parisian markets and railway stations.
Enzo E. Figueres5/20Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library is one of the biggest rare book libraries in the world, housed within a Modernist cube on the Yale campus. The cube shape is echoed on the inside by a central glass stack tower which holds around 100,000 of the library's volumes. A public exhibition hall surrounds it, displaying among other treasured texts one of the 48 extant copies of the Gutenberg Bible.
NielsDK/imageBROKER/REX/Shutterstock6/20The Black Diamond, Copenhagen
The Black Diamond was built in 1999 as an extension to the old building of the Royal Danish Library in central Copenhagen. Designed by Danish architects Schmidt Hammer Lassen, the building is clad in polished black granite, with a striking central ‘crevasse’ in glass which floods the central atrium with natural light.
Stuart Forster/REX/Shutterstock7/20The Bodleian Library, Oxford
The Bodleian is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, founded in 1602 as a continuation of an Oxford library which had existed since the early 1300s. A major donation of manuscripts by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester in the 1430s cemented the library’s reputation, but the extensive support of Thomas Bodley at the beginning of the 17th century gave the library its name and impressive Gothic buildings. The Bodleian contains one of the most extensive and valuable book collections in the world, including a Gutenberg Bible and the First Folio of Shakespeare.
Will Pryce/Thames Hudson/BNPS/REX/Shutterstock8/20Abbey of St Gall Library, St Gallen, Switzerland
What started in the seventh century as a hermitage for an Irish monk near the shores of Lake Constance eventually became one of the richest of all medieval monasteries. The library at St Gall has survived fires, invading Magyars, the Reformation, and even the abbey's secularization at the end of the 18th century. It is still one of the most important collections of medieval manuscripts in the world, and houses around 160,000 books in its sumptuous Rococo building.
Design Pics Inc/REX/Shutterstock9/20Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt
The library of ancient Alexandria, built in the 3rd century BC by the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, was the most significant centre of learning of its time in the world, gathering together a vast collection of Greek texts along with the scholars who flocked to read them. Major advances in geography, astronomy, and medicine were made at Alexandria until the library declined in importance after the Roman conquest. The current Alexandrian library is a tribute to its ancient predecessor's achievements, as well as an important repository for Arabic and French texts. It celebrates the ideal of global learning in its very architecture: the granite exterior is carved with characters from 120 different languages.
Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock10/20Library of Congress, Washington DC
The Library of Congress stretches back to the earliest days of American independence; originally established by James Madison, the library was burned during the British invasion in 1814, and Thomas Jefferson offered up his own personal library to replace its fledgling collection. Now it is said to be the largest library in the world–around 15,000 volumes arrive at its doors every day, since everything published in the US is required to be deposited there. The buildings on Capitol Hill are open to anyone, as long as they sign up for a reader's card.
Epics11/20Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge
As its name suggests, the library at Trinity College, Cambridge was a creation of the great architect Sir Christopher Wren. Large windows flood the space with light, while marble busts (mostly carved by) Louis-François Roubiliac of eminent Trinity men keep watch on the scholars as they work. Wren designed the bookcases, each of which features a Grinling Gibbons carving at its end. The library has many important possessions, including the manuscript of Milton's poems and Isaac Newton's notebook.
Will Pryce/Thames Hudson/BNPS/REX/Shutterstock12/20George Peabody Library, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
The city of Baltimore in the nineteenth century was a bustling industrial seaport and a place where fortunes were made. One of these fortunes, that of wealthy merchant George Peabody, went towards the founding of this library, which originally belonged to the Peabody Institute, but was incorporated into Johns Hopkins University in 1982. The building was designed by Edmund George Lind, and features a spectacular central reading room with six storeys of wrought-iron galleries.
DeAgostini/Getty Images13/20Clementinum, Prague
Prague's Clementinum complex has had quite a varied history, beginning life in the 11th century as a chapel to St Clement, transforming into a Dominican monastery, a Jesuit college, and part of the national university. The library here has existed since at least the seventeenth century, and is now the national library of the Czech Republic. The baroque interior houses many relics of its Jesuit past, including portraits of the order's saints and globes created by its members.
Seth Wenig/AP/REX/Shutterstock14/20New York Public Library, New York
The New York Public Library actually has more than ninety buildings around the vast city, but its main branch, the Beaux-Arts building in Bryant Park, Manhattan, is of course the most famous, and makes regular appearances in film and TV. The library owes its existence to some of America's wealthiest philanthropists: a legacy from John Jacob Astor created the first of the libraries that would be merged in 1895 to form the NYPL, and a later donation by Andrew Carnegie ensured its expansion and survival.
Guy THOUVENIN15/20Bibliotheca Marciana, Venice
Named for Venice's patron saint, St Mark, the Jacopo-Sansovino-designed Bibliotheca Marziana dates all the way back to the sixteenth century, when the Italian Renaissance was in full bloom and classical texts were frequently being rediscovered and rescued from obscurity. The heart of its original collection was the library of Cardinal Bessarion, a Greek Orthodox abbot who had become a Catholic cardinal, and one of the most important humanists and book-collectors of his age.
Manfred Bail/imageBROKER/REX/Shutterstock16/20Bavarian State Library, Munich
The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, founded in 1558 as the court library of Duke Albrecht V, is one of the most important research libraries in the world, with a collection of more than 10 million books. Its collection was founded on that of Johann Jakob Fugger, who had assembled a treasure trove of medieval manuscripts which still yields new discoveries: a scholar came across an 11th-century codex of homilies by the Alexandrian theologian Origen as recently as 2012.
KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/REX/Shutterstock17/20Liyuan Library, near Beijing, China
In the village of Huairou on the outskirts of Beijing, this serene library with its timber frame blends seamlessly into its countryside surroundings. Designed by architect Li Xiaodong, the frame is filled in by the wooden sticks which the village's inhabitants gather to fuel their cooking stoves. Its very understatedness makes it an important foil to the imposing libraries of urban environments.
Design Pics Inc/REX/Shutterstock18/20Trinity College Library, Dublin
Trinity College Library in Dublin is the recipient of many more tourists than most of the places on this list, since it houses one of Ireland's most significant national treasures - the 9th-century illuminated gospel book known as the Book of Kells. Its extravagant, complex illumination has influenced the development of Irish art, and visitors stream in to see it every day. Like its Cambridge counterpart, this Trinity reading room is also punctuated by the marble busts of great writers and patrons of the college, also created by Roubiliac and Scheemakers.
Moritz Wolf/imageBROKER/REX/Shutterstock19/20Warsaw University Library, Warsaw
The new building of Warsaw's university library eschews the grand columns and elaborate decoration of many important libraries, focusing instead on environmental credentials. Designed in the 1990s, it includes a botanical garden covering the roof of the main building, filled with bridges, streams, pathways, sculptures and plants.
imageBROKER/REX/Shutterstock20/20Vatican Apostolic Library, Vatican City, Italy
The Vatican's library is surely one of the most impressive in the world, and comprises around 75,000 manuscripts and 1.1 million printed books, both theological and secular. Among its most important possessions is Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209, the oldest known nearly complete manuscript of the Bible, which sits in state-of-the-art climate-controlled surroundings, among 26 miles of shelving for the library's immense collection.
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