Most Beautiful Libraries in the World

1.Joanina Library (Biblioteca Joanina)

Coimbra, Portugal

The supreme Baroque library: gilded ceilings, exotic-wood shelving, trompe-l'oeil arches, and a resident colony of bats that protect the rare books from insects each night.

2.Admont Abbey Library

Admont, Austria

The world's largest monastic library hall: a luminous white-and-gold Baroque masterpiece with seven frescoed cupolas and sculptures depicting the four stages of human knowledge.

3.Strahov Monastery Library

Prague, Czechia

Twin Baroque and Classicist halls beneath swirling ceiling frescoes, gilded globes and a cabinet of curiosities make Strahov's Theological and Philosophical halls jaw-dropping.

4.Trinity College Library (Long Room)

Dublin, Ireland

The barrel-vaulted Long Room, lined with marble busts and 200,000 ancient volumes, houses the Book of Kells and is among the most photographed libraries on earth.

5.Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen

St. Gallen, Switzerland

A UNESCO Rococo jewel with an inlaid parquet floor, sinuous gallery balconies and ceiling frescoes, holding manuscripts dating back to the eighth century.

6.Library of Congress (Thomas Jefferson Building)

Washington, United States

America's grandest temple of learning: a soaring Beaux-Arts Main Reading Room ringed by columns, murals, allegorical statues and a stained-glass dome.

7.José Vasconcelos Library

Mexico City, Mexico

A 'megalibrary' of floating glass-and-steel shelving suspended in a vast atrium, with a whale skeleton sculpture hovering inside the cathedral-like space.

8.Tianjin Binhai Library

Tianjin, China

The viral 'Eye of Binhai': undulating floor-to-ceiling terraced shelves wrapping a luminous spherical auditorium, one of the 21st century's most striking interiors.

9.George Peabody Library

Baltimore, United States

A 'cathedral of books': five tiers of cast-iron balconies rising toward a skylit atrium, often called the most beautiful library room in America.

10.Mafra Palace Library

Mafra, Portugal

A 300-foot Rococo gallery of marble floors and gilded wood, guarded by bats that feed on book-eating insects amid 36,000 priceless leather-bound volumes.

11.Abbey Library of Wiblingen

Ulm, Germany

A theatrical Rococo hall of twisting marbled columns, swirling pastel frescoes and a serpentine balcony, conceived as a stage set for the glory of knowledge.

12.Real Gabinete Português de Leitura

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

A Neo-Manueline reading room of carved ironwork, towering tiered shelves and a luminous skylight chandelier; widely ranked among the world's most beautiful libraries.

13.Klementinum Baroque Library

Prague, Czechia

A breathtaking 1722 Baroque hall with a ceiling fresco of the Temple of Wisdom, antique globes and a balustraded gallery, part of the vast Jesuit Klementinum.

14.Stuttgart City Library

Stuttgart, Germany

A minimalist white cube whose stepped central 'heart' atrium of pure white galleries glows ethereally, a modernist counterpoint to the Baroque giants.

15.Bodleian Library (Duke Humfrey's)

Oxford, United Kingdom

Oxford's medieval reading room with a painted timber ceiling and chained Gothic bookcases; one of Europe's oldest libraries and a Harry Potter filming site.

16.Biblioteca Marciana (Sansovino)

Venice, Italy

Sansovino's Renaissance masterpiece on St Mark's Square, its reading hall crowned by Titian and Veronese ceiling paintings and gilded Mannerist splendour.

17.Laurentian Library (Biblioteca Laurenziana)

Florence, Italy

Michelangelo's revolutionary Mannerist design: a dramatic flowing staircase and a serene reading room that broke Renaissance rules and shaped architectural history.

18.Royal Library of El Escorial

San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain

A majestic Renaissance hall with a vaulted ceiling frescoed with the seven liberal arts, marble floors and shelves of books arranged spine-inward.

19.Melk Abbey Library

Melk, Austria

A golden Baroque hall above the Danube with a Paul Troger ceiling fresco of Faith, gilded woodwork and 100,000 volumes in twelve interlinked rooms.

20.Stockholm Public Library

Stockholm, Sweden

Asplund's iconic rotunda: a vast cylindrical hall of curved tiered shelves under soft daylight, a defining work of Nordic Classicism and 20th-century design.

21.Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève

Paris, France

Labrouste's pioneering iron-framed reading room of slender arches and exposed structure, a 19th-century engineering landmark of luminous airy elegance.

22.Richelieu Reading Room (BnF)

Paris, France

Labrouste's Salle Ovale and the domed Salle Labrouste dazzle with skylit terracotta cupolas and slender cast-iron columns blossoming into the ceiling.

23.Library of the Benedictine Monastery of Metten

Metten, Germany

An exuberant Baroque hall where stucco atlantes appear to bear the weight of frescoed vaults, a riotous fusion of sculpture, painting and bookcases.

24.Codrington Library, All Souls College

Oxford, United Kingdom

Hawksmoor's serene Palladian hall of pale stone and white plasterwork, a 60-metre-long Gothic-windowed gallery considered one of England's finest interiors.

25.Sir Duncan Rice Library

Aberdeen, United Kingdom

A glowing white-and-glass cube whose irregular zigzag atrium spirals upward through eight floors, a bold contemporary landmark on Scotland's coast.

26.Seattle Central Library

Seattle, United States

Rem Koolhaas's faceted glass-and-steel origami, with its 'Book Spiral' ramp and acid-green escalators, redefined what a 21st-century library could look like.

27.Biblioteca Angelica

Rome, Italy

Europe's first public library, a sober yet stately Baroque hall of two-tiered walnut shelving lit by tall windows, opened to readers in 1604.

28.Biblioteca Casanatense

Rome, Italy

A magnificent 18th-century salone with carved wooden galleries running its full length, an antique meridian line and tens of thousands of historic volumes.

29.Vatican Apostolic Library (Sistine Hall)

Vatican City, Vatican City

The Salone Sistino blazes with Renaissance frescoes covering every vault, depicting councils, inventors of alphabets and the great libraries of antiquity.

30.Boston Public Library (McKim Building)

Boston, United States

America's first grand public library: the barrel-vaulted Bates Hall reading room, Sargent and Abbey murals, and an Italianate courtyard of arcaded calm.

31.New York Public Library (Rose Reading Room)

New York, United States

The Beaux-Arts Stephen A. Schwarzman Building's Rose Main Reading Room stretches two city blocks beneath chandeliers and a ceiling of painted clouds.

32.Riggs Library, Georgetown University

Washington, United States

A rare cast-iron 'stack library' of three slender balconied tiers, a jewel-box Gothic Revival hall now used for ceremonies and weddings.

33.Suzzallo Library Reading Room

Seattle, United States

A soaring 'cathedral of learning' with 35-foot Gothic windows, vaulted ceilings and chandeliers, often likened to a Harry Potter great hall.

34.Geisel Library, UC San Diego

San Diego, United States

A futuristic concrete-and-glass structure cantilevered like a spaceship over a wooded plaza, an icon of Brutalist sci-fi architecture.

35.Beinecke Rare Book Library

New Haven, United States

A windowless marble cube whose translucent Vermont-stone panels glow amber by day, sheltering a luminous glass tower of rare books at its core.

36.Hereford Cathedral Chained Library

Hereford, United Kingdom

The world's largest surviving chained library: medieval manuscripts still tethered to oak shelves by iron chains, alongside the famed Mappa Mundi.

37.Vennesla Library and Culture House

Vennesla, Norway

A warm timber interior of 27 rib-like wooden frames arching overhead like a whale's ribcage, a celebrated piece of Scandinavian contemporary design.

38.Oodi Helsinki Central Library

Helsinki, Finland

An undulating wood-clad civic landmark whose airy top-floor 'book heaven' floats under a wavy white ceiling with panoramic windows facing parliament.

39.Musashino Art University Library

Tokyo, Japan

Sou Fujimoto's spiraling labyrinth of continuous timber bookshelves forms both structure and walls, an architectural meditation on the act of browsing.

40.Kanazawa Umimirai Library

Kanazawa, Japan

A serene white box punctured by 6,000 small circular windows that scatter soft, even daylight across a calm, cake-like reading interior.

41.National Library of Belarus

Minsk, Belarus

A giant illuminated rhombicuboctahedron 'diamond' that glows with LED light shows at night, one of the world's most distinctive modern library forms.

42.Bibliotheca Alexandrina

Alexandria, Egypt

A vast tilted glass-roofed disc rising from the Mediterranean, its sun-shaped facade carved with scripts of the world, reviving antiquity's legendary library.

43.Qatar National Library

Doha, Qatar

OMA's single sweeping folded white surface forms terraced marble shelving around a sunken excavated 'Heritage Library' of antiquities at its centre.

44.Library of Birmingham

Birmingham, United Kingdom

A filigree facade of interlocking metal rings wraps stacked terraces leading up to a circular Shakespeare Memorial Room and rooftop garden views.

45.TU Delft Library

Delft, Netherlands

A grass-covered roof rises from the ground to a single steel cone, blending landscape and architecture above a cool, blue-toned reading hall.

46.Wren Library, Trinity College Cambridge

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Christopher Wren's restrained masterpiece of light and proportion, lined with limewood Grinling Gibbons carvings and busts above bays of ancient books.

47.Biblioteca Palafoxiana

Puebla, Mexico

The Americas' oldest public library, a UNESCO Baroque hall of three tiers of carved cedar and onyx shelving holding 45,000 colonial-era volumes.

48.Library of Parliament

Ottawa, Canada

A Gothic Revival rotunda of intricately carved white pine galleries radiating around a statue of Queen Victoria beneath a soaring ribbed dome.

49.Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library

Toronto, Canada

A dramatic Brutalist interior where tiers of book-lined balconies rise around a multi-storey atrium, a theatrical concrete temple to rare texts.

50.State Library Victoria (La Trobe Reading Room)

Melbourne, Australia

An octagonal domed reading room with radiating desks beneath one of the world's largest reinforced-concrete domes, flooded with daylight from above.

51.Duchess Anna Amalia Library

Weimar, Germany

The Rococo oval hall of the Duchess Anna Amalia, ringed by tiered galleries and busts, lovingly restored after a devastating 2004 fire.

52.Tama Art University Library

Tokyo, Japan

Toyo Ito's gently arched concrete colonnade ripples across a sloping floor, creating a flowing, almost weightless interior landscape of arches.

53.Liyuan Library

Beijing, China

A small rural retreat clad entirely in firewood sticks that filter dappled light onto stepped wooden reading terraces overlooking a mountain village.

54.Phillips Exeter Academy Library

Exeter, United States

Louis Kahn's brick-and-concrete masterwork: a central atrium framed by giant circular openings revealing floors of books, a study in light and geometry.

55.Marsh's Library

Dublin, Ireland

Ireland's first public library, an unchanged early-18th-century interior of dark oak bays and wired reading 'cages' where scholars were once locked in with rare books.

56.Austrian National Library

Vienna, Austria

The State Hall (Prunksaal) is Europe's grandest Baroque library: a 80-metre frescoed gallery of walnut shelves, marble statues and antique globes under a dome.

57.Raczyński Library

Poznań, Poland

A graceful Neoclassical hall behind a long colonnaded facade said to echo the Louvre, a 19th-century civic gift restored after wartime ruin.

58.Mortlock Wing, State Library of South Australia

Adelaide, Australia

A French Renaissance hall of three balconied galleries beneath a glass dome and lantern, regularly named one of the world's most beautiful libraries.

59.Central Library, Vancouver

Vancouver, Canada

A Colosseum-inspired elliptical structure wrapped by a free-standing curved colonnade, crowned by a public rooftop garden with mountain views.

60.Calgary Central Library

Calgary, Canada

A sculptural cedar-and-glass hall bridging a working rail line, its warm wood-lined central atrium spiraling up beneath a faceted snowflake-patterned facade.

61.Beitou Public Library

Taipei, Taiwan

Taiwan's first green library, a timber-and-glass eco-pavilion with broad balconies and a planted roof nestled among the trees of Beitou Park.

62.Biblioteca de la Universidad de Salamanca

Salamanca, Spain

One of Europe's oldest university libraries, a stately hall of carved galleries and astronomical instruments behind Salamanca's famed Plateresque facade.

63.Schussenried Abbey Library

Bad Schussenried, Germany

A small but exuberant Rococo abbey hall of pastel frescoes, gilded scrollwork and double-storey galleries supported by twisting figural columns.

64.Handelingenkamer (Dutch Parliament Library)

The Hague, Netherlands

A jewel-like cast-iron galleried reading room richly painted in Japanese-inspired colours, lit by a glass roof and ringed by ornate balconies.

65.Maughan Library

London, United Kingdom

A Gothic Revival former Public Record Office whose octagonal Round Reading Room, modelled on a chapter house, anchors King's College's grand stone library.

66.Gladstone's Library

Hawarden, United Kingdom

Britain's only residential library, an oak-galleried Gothic reading room where guests can sleep among 150,000 books once owned by the Victorian statesman.

67.Library of Celsus

Selçuk, Turkey

The reconstructed two-storey marble facade of the ancient Library of Celsus, with niches and statues of the Virtues, is one of antiquity's most beautiful ruins.

68.Saraswathi Mahal Library

Thanjavur, India

One of Asia's oldest surviving libraries, set in the Thanjavur palace, preserving thousands of palm-leaf and paper manuscripts amid Maratha-era halls.

69.Rampur Raza Library

Rampur, India

An Indo-Saracenic palace library of mirrored ceilings and gilded halls holding rare Mughal manuscripts, miniatures and illuminated Qurans.

70.Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library

Patna, India

A graceful colonial-era institution housing one of the world's finest collections of Persian and Arabic manuscripts, including rare illuminated treasures.

71.Wells Cathedral Chained Library

Wells, United Kingdom

A long medieval gallery above the cloisters of Wells Cathedral, lined with timber shelving and rare chained early-printed books in a serene Gothic setting.

72.Cuypers Library

Amsterdam, Netherlands

The Netherlands' largest art-history library, a spectacular spiraling cast-iron galleried hall at the heart of the Rijksmuseum, lined with centuries of books.

73.Bibliothèque Mazarine

Paris, France

France's oldest public library, a serene 17th-century gallery of warm wood shelving, antique globes and busts beneath a painted ceiling near the Institut de France.

74.Wiblingen Abbey Library

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75.National Central Library (Taiwan)

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