“True, knowledge is power. But we forget, knowledge is also beautiful in the abstract and in real.”
These libraries are testaments to the enduring and inspiring energy we draw from architecture, art, sciences, and the human spirit.
But one must wonder about this seemingly chicken-and-egg situation: is civilisation inspired by libraries or are libraries inspired by civilisation.
From our partners:
Just like any art-imitating-science and science-imitating-art discourse, the best way to an informed decision is to see for yourself, both digitally and in real.
As they say, carry on.
No. 1 | Trinity College Library
Dublin, Ireland
The Library is the permanent home to the famous Book of Kells. Two of the four volumes are on public display, one opened to a major decorated page and the other to a typical page of text.
The Library proper occupies several buildings, four of which are at the Trinity College campus itself, with another part of the Trinity Centre at St. James’s Hospital, Dublin.
The 65-metre-long (213 ft) main chamber of the Old Library, the Long Room, was built between 1712 and 1732 and houses 200,000 of the Library’s oldest books. The Long Room is measured at almost 65 metres long. After it was first built The Long Room had a flat ceiling, shelving for books only on the lower level, and an open gallery. By the 1850s the room needed to be expanded as the shelves were filled due to the fact that the Library had been given permission to obtain a free copy of every book that had been published in Ireland and Britain. In 1860, The Long Room’s roof was raised to accommodate an upper gallery.
No. 2 | Austrian National Library
Vienna, Austria
Austrian National Library is the largest library in Austria, with 7.4 million items in its various collections. Founded by the Habsburgs, the library was originally called the Hof-Bibliothek “Imperial Library”. The change to the current name occurred in 1920. The library is located in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. The library complex includes four museums, as well as multiple special collections and archives.
One of the major tasks of the Austrian National Library is the collection and archiving of all publications appearing in Austria including electronic media. Depending on the law for the medium, four copies, and by other printing elements, two obligation copies each, must be delivered to the National Library by periodic printing elements appearing in Austria.
No. 3 | Library Of Congress
Washington D.C., USA
The Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in its collections.
The Library’s mission is to support the Congress in fulfilling its constitutional duties and to further the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people.
The Library of Congress was established April 24, 1800, when President John Adams signed an act of Congress providing for the transfer of the seat of government from Philadelphia to the new capital city of Washington.
No. 4 | Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Paris, France
Bibliothèque Nationale de France is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It traces its origin to the royal library founded at the Louvre Palace by Charles V in 1368 and preserves and makes known the national documentary heritage.
The BnF’s collections are unique in the world: 14 million books and printed documents, manuscripts, prints, photographs, maps and plans, scores, coins, medals, sound documents, video and multimedia documents, scenery elements. All disciplines, whether intellectual, artistic or scientific, are represented in a comprehensive way. About 150 000 documents are added to the collections each year thanks to legal deposit, acquisitions and donations.
No. 5 | Stuttgart Municipal Library
Stuttgart, Germany
The new 9-storey library building deliberately takes its cue from the block structure of the projected 7-storey buildings in the area, and rises up like a great crystalline cube within the grassed area at Mailänder Platz.
The Municipal Library has become Stuttgart’s new intellectual and cultural centre that is open to people of every nation. This is also 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.
No. 6 | Royal Portuguese Reading Room
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The Real Gabinete Português de Leitura (English: Royal Portuguese Reading Room) has the largest and most valuable literary of Portuguese outside Portugal. Constructed between 1880 and 1887, it has more than 350,000 volumes in a library, fully computerized, which brings together rare books from the XVI, XVII and XVIII. The library receives a copy of Portugal for each of the works published in the country according to its status of “legal deposit”.
Its incredible architecture beauty and its rich collection transport you to the 19th century when you visit this library in Rio de Janeiro.
No. 7 | State Library of Victoria
Melbourne, Australia
The State Library of Victoria is the central library of the state of Victoria, Australia, located in Melbourne. It is on the block bounded by Swanston, La Trobe, Russell, and Little Lonsdale streets, in the northern centre of the central business district. The library holds over 2 million books and 16,000 serials, including the diaries of the city’s founders, John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner, and the folios of Captain James Cook, R.N.
The Dome Galleries at the Library include two permanent exhibitions – Mirror of the World: books and ideas which features the Library’s History of the Book collections (including a rare folio of Audubon’s Birds of America)and The Changing Face of Victoria which examines the social history of Victoria (which includes the armour of the notorious bushranger Ned Kelly).
No. 8 | University of Aberdeen Library
Aberdeen, Scotland
On September 24th 2012, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain marks the official opening of the University of Aberdeen New Library in Scotland. The building, won in an architectural competition in 2005 by schmidt hammer lassen architects, is replacing the University’s former library from 1965 – the Queen Mother Library.
The 15,500 m² new library, which provides a 21st century learning and research environment for students, university staff, visitors and the public, is a positive example of how architecture can make a difference. Since the building was put into service in September 2011, the statistics have shown a significant increase in the use of the library, and more than 700,000 visitors have entered the building this first year of operation.
“The University of Aberdeen New Library functions as a meeting place and a cultural centre for the students of the University as well as the Aberdeen community.”
No. 9 | Admont Abbey Library
Admont, Austria
Admont Abbey (German: Stift Admont) is a Benedictine monastery located on the Enns River in the town of Admont, Austria. The oldest remaining monastery in Styria, Admont Abbey contains the largest monastic library in the world as well as a long-established scientific collection. It is known for its Baroque architecture, art, and manuscripts.
The library hall, built in 1776 to designs by the architect Joseph Hueber, is 70 metres long, 14 metres wide and 13 metres high, and is the largest monastery library in the world. It contains c. 70,000 volumes of the monastery’s entire holdings of c. 200,000 volumes. The ceiling consists of seven cupolas, decorated with frescoes by Bartolomeo Altomonte showing the stages of human knowledge up to the high point of Divine Revelation. Light is provided by 48 windows and is reflected by the original colour scheme of gold and white. The architecture and design express the ideals of the Enlightenment, against which the sculptures by Joseph Stammel of “The Four Last Things” make a striking contrast.
The abbey possesses over 1,400 manuscripts, the oldest of which, from St. Peter’s Abbey in Salzburg, were the gift of the founder, Archbishop Gebhard, and accompanied the first monks to settle here, as well as over 900 incunabulae.
No. 10 | Bibliotheca Alexandrina
Alexandria, Egypt
Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a major library and cultural center located on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in the Egyptian city of Alexandria. It is both a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, and an attempt to rekindle something of the brilliance that this earlier center of study and erudition represented.
The Library of Alexandria was reborn in October 2002 to reclaim the mantle of its ancient namesake. It is not just an extraordinarily beautiful building; it is also a vast complex where the arts, history, philosophy, and science come together.
The dimensions of the project are vast. The library has shelf space for eight million books, with the main reading room covering 70,000 square metres (750,000 sq ft) on eleven cascading levels. The complex also houses a conference center, specialized libraries for maps, multimedia, the blind and visually impaired, young people, and for children, four museums, four art galleries for temporary exhibitions, 15 permanent exhibitions, a planetarium, and a manuscript restoration laboratory. The library’s architecture is equally striking. The main reading room stands beneath a 32-meter-high glass-panelled roof, tilted out toward the sea like a sundial, and measuring some 160 m in diameter. The walls are of gray Aswan granite, carved with characters from 120 different human scripts.
No. 11 | Bodleian Library
Oxford, United Kingdom
Bodleian Library is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in Britain is second in size only to the British Library with over 11 million items. Known to Oxford scholars as “Bodley” or simply “the Bod”, under the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 it is one of six legal deposit libraries for works published in the United Kingdom.
The New Bodleian building was rebuilt behind its original façade to provide improved storage facilities for rare and fragile material, as well as better facilities for readers and visitors.
It reopened to readers as the Weston Library on 21 March 2015. In March 2010 the group of libraries known collectively as “Oxford University Library Services” was renamed “The Bodleian Libraries”, thus allowing those Oxford members outside the Bodleian to acquire the gloss of the Bodleian brand.
No. 12 | Biblioteca Joanina
Coimbra, Portugal
The Joanina Library (Biblioteca Joanina) is the Baroque library of the University of Coimbra, built in the 18th century during the reign of the Portuguese King João V and named after him. It is located in upper Coimbra, the university historic centre, near the university tower, and is part of University of Coimbra General Library.
Over the entrance door, the library exhibits the national coat of arms. Inside, there are three great rooms divided by decorated arches, bearing the same style as the portal and entirely executed by Portuguese artists. The walls are covered by two storied shelves, in gilded or painted exotic woods; the painted ceilings, by the Lisbon artists Simões Ribeiro and Vicente Nunes, blend harmoniously with the rest of the decoration. The library contains about 250 thousand volumes, namely works of medicine, geography, history, humanistic studies, science, civil and canon law, philosophy and theology. It is a National Monument and has a priceless historical value being one of the main tourist attractions among the older monuments belonging to the university.
No. 13 | The Royal Library
Copenhagen, Denmark
The Royal Library is the national library of Denmark and the university library of the University of Copenhagen. It is the largest library in the Nordic countries. It contains numerous historical treasures; all works that have been printed in Denmark since the 17th century are deposited there.
Today, The Royal Library has five sites: The main library at Slotsholmen, Copenhagen harbour (in the Black Diamond), covering all subjects and special collections; one at Nørre Alle, Faculty Library of Natural and Health Sciences; one at Gothersgade, central Copenhagen, Faculty Library of Social Sciences; one at Amager, Faculty Library of Humanities; and, one in Studiestræde, central Copenhagen, The Faculty of Law Library.
No. 14 | Delft University Of Technology Library
Delft, Netherlands
Delft University Of Technology Library also known as TU Delft, is the largest and oldest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. With eight faculties and numerous research institutes it hosts over 19,000 students (undergraduate and postgraduate), more than 3,300 scientists and more than 2,200 people in the support and management staff.
The university was established on January 8, 1842 by King William II of the Netherlands as a Royal Academy, with the main purpose of training civil servants for the Dutch East Indies. The school rapidly expanded its research and education curriculum, becoming first a Polytechnic School in 1864, Institute of Technology in 1905, gaining full university rights, and finally changing its name to Delft University of Technology in 1986.
No. 15 | El Escorial Library
Escorial, Spain
The Royal Site of San Lorenzo de El Escorial commonly known as El Escorial, is a historical residence of the King of Spain, in the town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, about 45 kilometres (28 miles) northwest of the capital, Madrid, in Spain. It is one of the Spanish royal sites and functions as a monastery, royal palace, museum, and school. It is situated 2.06 km (1.28 mi) up the valley (4.1 km [2.5 mi] road distance) from the town of El Escorial.
El Escorial is situated at the foot of Mt. Abantos in the Sierra de Guadarrama. This austere location, hardly an obvious choice for the site of a royal palace, was chosen by King Philip II of Spain, and it was he who ordained the building of a grand edifice here to commemorate the 1557 Spanish victory at the Battle of St. Quentin in Picardy against Henry II, king of France.
The library’s collection consists of more than 40,000 volumes, located in a great hall fifty-four meters in length, nine meters wide and ten meters tall with marble floors and beautifully carved wood shelves. The library includes many important illuminated manuscripts, such as the Ottonian Golden Gospels of Henry III.
The vault of the library’s ceiling is decorated with frescoes depicting the seven liberal arts: Rhetoric, Dialectic, Music, Grammar, Arithmetic, Geometry and Astronomy.
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