/ Today's Bookshelf / By

Nine Beautiful Bookeries of the World

People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.

Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
Established in 1878, the George Peabody Library has been attached to the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD since 1982; it includes first editions by several prominent American authors, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. L. Mencken.
Trinity College Library, located in Dublin, Ireland, naturally serves Trinity College. It is a "legal deposit" library, meaning that a copy of any work published in Ireland must be deposited there gratis; it is also the home of the Brian Boru Harp, a national symbol at least six centuries old, and the Book of Kells, one of the most famous illuminated Gospel books in the world.
Serving the University of California, San Diego, the Geisel Library (named in honor of Theodor Seuss Geisel, a.k.a. "Dr. Seuss") is one of the few works of Brutalist architecture to display a definite sense of whimsy. It hosts an immense collection of Seuss originals (over eight thousand sketches, notebooks, drafts, etc.), and is reputed to have a secret third floor no one can enter ...
The Strahov Abbey was founded in 1143 in Prague, now the capital of the Czech Republic and at the time a prominent city of the Duchy of Bohemia (an important constituent part of the Holy Roman Empire). Prague has long been one of the premier intellectual centers of the Continent, and an important center of European Protestantism and Judaism.
The New York City Public Library system is the fourth-largest in the world. It was founded as a bequest of John Jacob Astor in 1854. It has ninety-two branch locations, and serves three of the city's five boroughs (Brooklyn and Queens are served by their own public library systems).
The University of Al-Qawariyyin (unofficially, the University of Fez) was founded as a Moroccan mosque in the ninth century, during a period known as the Islamic Golden Age. Muslim scholars of this era made advances in mathematics, philosophy, jurisprudence, chemistry, astronomy, optics, and other fields, and Al-Qawariyyin is still the oldest continuously-operating university in the world.
The Livraria Lello, located in the city of Porto in northern Portugal, is actually a bookstore rather than a library. It has been in operation since 1881; the molding on its ceilings (made of plaster rather than wood) resemble the decorative carvings that frequently appear in Gothic architecture.
Founded in 1602, the Bodleian Library is a landmark of Oxford University. Among other treasures, the Bodleian is the home of the only manuscript copy of the Song of Roland, four of the seventeen extant copies of the Magna Carta, the Codex Laudianus (a sixth-century manuscript copy of the New Testament), and the Bakhshali manuscript (thought to be the oldest manuscript of Indian mathematics and the first recorded instance of the character zero).

A longer version of this list was created by James Lucas for CLT’s account on X (formerly Twitter). It has been cross-posted with changes.

If you enjoyed this piece, and would like to see more on our list of people who might fill these shelves, check out our bios of Thucydides, Julius Cæsar, St. Athanasius, Hugh of St. Victor, John Donne, Anna Julia Cooper, and Ernest Hemingway.

Published on 13th August, 2024. Page image of the Abbey Library of St. Gall (source), a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site; the collection is one of the oldest libraries in the world, dating originally to 937, and is located in Sankt Gallen, Switzerland (formerly a Carolingian-era Benedictine monastery).

Share this post:
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email

Start typing and press enter to search

Scroll to Top