The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World

Readers were let in here in 1454, two years after the builders finished. Matteo Nuti ran the work for Malatesta Novello, and the hall has kept its structure, fittings and codices since — a vaulted ceiling carried on two rows of columns, aisles of benches and desks, and books still attached by a chain running from the cover to a rod above the shelf.

Malatestiana Library - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malatestiana_Library

Oxford built this room between 1450 and 1480 as a second storey over the Divinity School, to house the collection, and it is the oldest reading room in the Bodleian. Its ceiling is a grid of panels painted with the arms of the university, and the oak bookcases stand at right angles to the walls with desks built into them.

Duke Humfrey's Library - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Humfrey's_Library

A staircase almost entirely fills the tall, narrow vestibule, flowing down from the door of the reading room; Bartolomeo Ammannati built it to Michelangelo's design. Cosimo I opened the still-incomplete Florence library to scholars in 1571 — the reading room beyond runs 46 metres, lit by window bays articulated with pilasters that line up with the ceiling beams.

Laurentian Library - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentian_Library

When the doors opened for Easter in 1689, the collection moved into a building raised where the medieval Tour de Nesle had stood, on the bank of the Seine. Mazarin's own bookcases came with it, Corinthian columns and his coat of arms carved into them. France has no older public library — the cardinal had been letting scholars into his collection since 1643.

Bibliothèque Mazarine - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliothèque_Mazarine

Grinling Gibbons carved a limewood panel for the end of every stack, and plaster cast busts of writers sit above them. Trinity College in Cambridge finished the room in 1695, to a design Christopher Wren had made in 1676. The stacks themselves run perpendicular to the walls, set under the gaps between the windows.

Wren Library - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wren_Library

Bats live in the Coimbra library and feed at night, which is what keeps insects off the books, and staff cover the credenzas with leather sheets before they go home. John V of Portugal began the building in 1717 and construction was completed in 1728 — three great rooms open through decorated arches, with shelves two storeys high in gilded and painted exotic woods, most of them Brazilian.

Biblioteca Joanina - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblioteca_Joanina

Above the entrance door a Greek inscription, ΨΥΧΗΣ ΙΑΤΡΕΙΟΝ, translates as "healing place for the soul". Peter Thumb built the Rococo hall in St Gallen between 1758 and 1767, over a monastic collection that is the oldest in Switzerland — the library and the Abbey of St Gall were designated a World Heritage Site in 1983.

Abbey library of Saint Gall - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_library_of_Saint_Gall

Puebla's cathedral college finished the vaulted hall on its second floor in 1773, long after Bishop Palafox y Mendoza handed the Colegio de San Juan his own books. The room runs 43 metres under that vault, levels of bookshelves line the walls, and a retablo of the Madonna of Trapani by Nino Pisano was acquired for it — UNESCO recognises the library as the first and oldest public one in the Americas.

Biblioteca Palafoxiana - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblioteca_Palafoxiana

Down the middle of the Paris reading room runs a spine of slender cast-iron Ionic columns, dividing the floor into twin aisles and carrying openwork arches under plaster barrel vaults. Henri Labrouste built it between 1838 and 1851; the structure was completed in December 1850 and the doors opened to the public on 4 February 1851 — the ironwork was left on show rather than hidden above a ceiling.

Sainte-Geneviève Library - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sainte-Geneviève_Library

At 61 feet the atrium tops out in a latticed skylight of frosted glass — tiers of black cast-iron balconies from the Bartlett-Hayward Company ring it, along with gold-scalloped columns holding the stacks. Baltimore architect Edmund G. Lind designed the neo-Greco East Wing structure, and it opened to the public in 1878.

George Peabody Library - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Peabody_Library

Boston's Central Library takes up a full city block on Copley Square, and it opened in the first week of February 1895, days after officials toured it — borrowing started on 11 March. Charles Follen McKim designed the older half of the building. Bates Hall, its reading room, sits under a barrel vault and runs wall to wall across the second floor.

Boston Central Library - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKim_Building

Princess Isabel inaugurated the Neo-Manueline building in Rio de Janeiro on 10 September 1887, to a design by Rafael da Silva e Castro, and the library inside opened to the public in 1900. Germano José Salle worked the façade in Lisbon stone and shipped it across. A chandelier hangs over the reading room beneath a skylight in iron structure — the first of its kind in Brazil.

Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Portuguese_Cabinet_of_Reading

Translucent Danby marble, milled to 1.25 inches, makes a façade with no windows at all, and daylight comes through it as a subtle golden amber glow. Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill completed Yale's rare book library in 1963 — it opened that October around a six-storey glass-enclosed tower of stacks, held up by four piers at the corners.

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beinecke_Rare_Book_and_Manuscript_Library

Thirty-two metres overhead, a glass-panelled roof some 160 metres across tilts out toward the sea like a sundial, and the reading levels cascade down beneath it. Snøhetta won the design competition, and the complex was officially inaugurated on 16 October 2002 — grey granite walls carry characters carved from scripts around the world.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina

Stand in the park outside and a luminous sphere shows through an eye-shaped opening in the façade — indoors, terraced shelves climb floor to ceiling around that sphere, which doubles as an auditorium. MVRDV designed the library with the Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute, and it opened in October 2017. For the opening-day photographs, book spines were printed onto the backs of the shelf space.

Tianjin Binhai Library - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianjin_Binhai_Library