Libraries of Wonder & Delight
One of the greatest gifts my parents passed on to me is the love of books.
Immerse yourself in a book and the world around you disappears. Choose the right book and you can enter a world full of wonder and enchantment. You can travel the world and see marvelous sights without ever leaving your comfy chair. You are curled up in a large comfy chair aren’t you?
Along with the love of books came a love of browsing book stores and libraries. I can be content for hours in one of those places.
Imagine then, how it would be, to lose yourself in a library like one of these:
Stiftsbibliothek Klosterneuburg, Klosterneuburg, Austria
Trinity College Library, AKA, The Long Room, Dublin, Ireland
Strahov Theological Hall – Original Baroque Cabinet
Strahov Philosophical Hall
Abbey Library St. Gallen, Switzerland
Angelica Library, Rome, Italy
Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel, Germany
Biblioteca Angelica, Rome, Italy
Biblioteca Di Bella Arti, Milan, Italy
Biblioteca do Palacio e Convento de Mafra I, Lisbon Coast, Portugal
Biblioteca do Pala`cio Nacional da Ajuda Lisboa III, Lisbon, Portugal
Biblioteca Geral University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal
Biblioteca Palafoxiana, Puebla, Mexico
Bibliotecha de la Real Academia De La Lengua, Madrid, Spain
Bibliotheque Alencon, Normandy, France
Bibliothe´que Nationale de France, Paris, France
Duke of Humphrey’s Library, Bodleian, Oxford University, England
Boston Copley Public Library, Boston, USA
Old British Reading Room, British Museum, London, England
Casanatense Library, Rome, Italy
El Escorial Library, San Lorenzo, Spain
Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, USA
George Peabody Library, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Handelingenkamer Tweede Kamer Der Staten-Generaal Den Haag, the Hague, Netherlands
Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek Weimar II, Germany
Joanina LIbrary University of Coimbra, Portugal
Kremsmuenster Abbey Library, Kremsmu¨nster, Upper Austria.
Library of Congress, Washington, DC, USA
Library of Parliament, Ottawa, Canada
Library of St. Walburga, Zutphen, Netherland (Preserved from the 16th century)
Library of the Benedictine Monastery of Admont, Austria
Library of the National Palace of Mafra, Portugal
Library of the Prussian King Frederic the Second in Potsdam, Germany
Melk Monastery Library, Melk, Austria
New York Public Library, New York, USA
Queen’s College Library Oxford
Real Gabinete Portugues De Leitura Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
Riggs Library, Georgetown University, USA
Rijkmuseum Library, Amsterdam
Russian National Library, St. Petersburg
St. Florian Monastery-Library, Austria
Salamanca Library, Salamanca, Spain
Sansovino Library, Rome, Italy
Sorbonne Library, Paris, France
Suzzallo Library, Seattle, Washington, USA
The New Library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
Theology Room at St. Deiniol’s library, North Wales
Vatican Library, Vatican City, Rome
Austrian National Library, Vienna, Austria
Waldsassen Abbey Library, Bavaria, Germany
Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge, England
Bad Schussenried Bibliothekssaal, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Florence, Italy
Bibliothe`que Solvay, Brussels, Belgium
Boston Athenæum, Boston, MA, USA
Codrington Library, All Souls College, Oxford, England
Cornell Law School Library, Ithaca, NY, USA
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C., USA
George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore House Library, Asheville, N.C., USA
Harper Library, The University of Chicago, IL, USA
John Rylands Library, Manchester, England
Klementium Library, Prague, Czech Republic
Pierpont Morgan Library, NY, NY, USA
The Grolier Club Library, NY, NY, USA
Law Library, Iowa State Legislature, IA, USA
The St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, Northeast Vermont, USA
Thomas Crane Library, Quincy MA, USA
University of Michigan (Old) Law Library, MI, USA
Widener Library, Harvard. Cambridge, MA, USA
Wiblingen Monestary Library, Ulm, Germany
Mitchell Library, Sydney
Libraries are like Cathedrals. . In one you worship the written word. In the other you worship God.
Thank you so much for this stunning website!
The most breathtaking images of our local, magnificent restoration project (the ones that would be appropriate for your website) are acquired by googling St Louis Central Library and clicking images. Here is the address of their humble webpage: http://central.slpl.org/index.html
Susan thank you so much for the link to the library restoration. What an enormous task! But isn’t it wonderful that the right people saw the benefit of restoring the original and not ripping it down to make way for some bland steel and glass structure! Absolutely wonderful!
This was a beautiful, amazing, and talented display of photography. Thanks!
Absolutely breathtaking!! Magnificent and hope-inspiring- We can’t be all bad as a human race, to have created these beautiful edifices… Thanks for sharing these pictures! 🙂
you are right, their beauty is hope inspiring. I have to believe that in order to create such beauty, the creators must have had beautiful souls.
Thank you, such a surprising tour of places I have been and libraries I have missed.
I know right? who puts libraries on their list of things to do as a tourist? Yet look how utterly amazing and beautiful they are. I would feel the same kind of reverence in those places as I would in a cathedral!
i wish we have a big library as like this in my home town
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