World’s oldest libraries
Article Title: World’s oldest libraries
Author: Nicky Sinha Francis
Genres: Article
A heaven of books
When your world revolves around books, all you can think of a cozy beautiful place only for your books and you. For others, it’s point to laugh, but for you it’s your passion and your own personal space where you can escape from your stress and pain that you go through. To tell you the truth, I’ve never been to a library apart from the library in your school and college. There are places, beyond my imagination where books are preserve, a heaven only for books. I bring the 10 of World’s most ancient and beautiful libraries.
1. Librije in Zutphen, Netherlands.
The Librije dates back to the 16th century and sits inside St. Walburga’s Church, which was built in the 11th century.
De Librije is a chain library from 1561 in the Walburgiskerk on the ‘s-Gravenhof in Zutphen . It is one of the few surviving chain libraries that are preserved in their original place. Other well-known chain libraries are in Cesena in Italy and Hereford in England . The collection in Zutphen consists of approximately 750 books, several of which are chained to age-old lectrines.
Librije in Zutphen, Netherlands chained library
The library contains a collection of incunabula, books dating from the first period of printing, the second half of the fifteenth century. Many books are unique; the only known copy of a particular edition. An important work in the library is a first edition of Nicolaas Copernicus ‘ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium .
In 2008, the library’s first catalogue, the Catalog Librije Zutphen, was published for the first time since 1903, which had been in the works for ten years. The books are not housed in shelves, but are chained to reading desks. Many of the oldest and ancient libraries locked up their collections to deter thieves.
2. Wells Cathedral’s library in Somerset, England.
Wells Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in Wells, Somerset, England, dedicated to St Andrew the Apostle and seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, whose cathedra it holds as mother church of the Diocese of Bath and Wells.
Built as a Roman Catholic cathedral from around 1175 to replace an earlier church on the site since 705, it became an Anglican cathedral when King Henry VIII split from Rome. It is moderately sized for an English cathedral. Its broad west front and large central tower are dominant features. It has been called “unquestionably one of the most beautiful” and “most poetic” of English cathedrals.
From the reflecting pool in the grounds of the Bishop’s Palace. Its Gothic architecture is mostly inspired by Early English style of the late 12th to early 13th centuries, lacking the Romanesque work that survives in many other cathedrals. Building began about 1175 at the east end with the choir. Historian John Harvey sees it as Europe’s first truly Gothic structure, breaking the last constraints of Romanesque. The stonework of its pointed arcades and fluted piers bears pronounced moldings and carved capitals in a foliate, “stiff-leaf” style.
Its Early English front with 300 sculpted figures is seen as a “supreme triumph of the combined plastic arts in England”. The east end retains much ancient stained glass.
Unlike many cathedrals of monastic foundation, Wells has many surviving secular ancient buildings linked to its chapter of secular canons, including the Bishop’s Palace and the 15th-century residential Vicars’ Close. It is a Grade I listed building.
3. Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy.
The Laurentian Library (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana or BML) is a historic library in Florence, Italy, containing more than 11,000 manuscripts and 4,500 early printed books. Built in a cloister of the Medicean Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze under the patronage of the Medici Pope Clement VII, the library was built to emphasize that the Medici were no longer just merchants but members of intelligent and ecclesiastical society.
It contains the manuscripts and books belonging to the private library of the Medici family. The library building is renowned for its ancient architecture was designed by Michelangelo and is an example of Mannerism.
Michaelangelo designed and built this library, which opened in 1571. It has over 11,000 manuscripts and 5,000 books that once belonged to the private library of the Medici family. The floor of the reading room pictured above features 15 red and white terra cotta panels with geometric shapes.
4. The reading room in Spain’s Senate in Madrid.
The Palace of the Senate is the home of the Senate of Spain, the upper house of the Cortes Generales, the national parliament of Spain. It is located in the Spanish Navy Square, in the center of the City of Madrid.
The building was built in the 16th century and was the home of a Saint Augustine Order school called Incarnation School or Doña María de Aragón School.
The school was one of the most outstanding institutions of the capital, and its church contained several ancient masterpieces of El Greco, today in the Prado Museum.
In 1814 and between 1820 and 1823 the palace was the home of the Cortes of Cádiz, the first official parliament of Spain.
With the approval of the Royal Statute of 1834, the Cortes Generales was established as a bicameral parliament with the Chamber of Peers as the upper house.
The Chambers of Peers moved to the palace in 1835 and with many name and powers changes, this palace continued serving as the home of the upper house of the Cortes until 1923.
During the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923–1930), the Cortes were dissolved and was created the National Consultative Assembly which had its home in the Palacio de las Cortes. With the arrival of the Second Republic, the unicameral parliament established its home at the Palacio de las Cortes and the constitutional debates were held at the Palacio de Cristal del Retiro.
During the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, the palace was the home of the National Council of the Movement, a pseudo Senate controlled by Franco.
With the return of democracy in 1977, the Senate was restored in its original home and, along with the Congress of Deputies, wrote the democratic Constitution of 1978.
5. The Sorbonne Library in Paris, France.
The Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de la Sorbonne (lit. ’Sorbonne Interuniversity Library’) is an inter-university library in Paris, France. The library is situated in the Sorbonne building. It is a medieval institution of the Sorbonne, which evolved over the centuries as part of the University of Paris. It is a common oldest library of Panthéon-Sorbonne University and Sorbonne-Nouvelle University. Its administered by Panthéon-Sorbonne University as per a governing agreement signed among these universities in 2020.
Part of the University of Paris, the Sorbonne Library was founded in 1289. In 1791 during the French Revolution, the books were distributed to other libraries to protect them.
Today, many of them have since returned, and the library’s original architecture was officially restored in 2013. The reading room shown above stretches over 200 feet long and can sit 260 bibliophiles.
6. The Palais Bourbon Library in Seine, France.
The Palais Bourbon (pronounced [pa.lɛ buʁ.bɔ̃]) is the meeting place of the National Assembly, the lower legislative chamber of the French Parliament. It is located in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, on the Rive Gauche of the Seine, across from the Place de la Concorde.
This ancient palace was built beginning in 1722 for Louise Françoise de Bourbon, Duchess of Bourbon, the legitimised daughter of Louis XIV and the Marquise de Montespan. Four successive architects – Lorenzo Giardini, Pierre Cailleteau, Jean Aubert and Jacques Gabriel – completed the palace in 1728. It was then nationalised during the French Revolution.
From 1795 to 1799, during the Directory, it was the meeting place of the Council of Five Hundred, which chose the government leaders. Beginning in 1806, during Napoleon’s French Empire, Bernard Poyet’s Neoclassical façade was added to mirror that of the Church of the Madeleine, facing it across the Seine beyond the Place de la Concorde.
The palace complex today has a floor area of 124,000 m2 (1,330,000 sq ft), with over 9,500 rooms, in which 3,000 people work. The complex includes the Hôtel de Lassay, on the west side of the Palais Bourbon; it is the official residence of the President of the National Assembly.
7. The Sissinghurst Castle Garden Library in Kent, England.
Sissinghurst Castle Garden, at Sissinghurst in the Weald of Kent in England, was created by Vita Sackville-West, poet and writer, and her husband Harold Nicolson, author and diplomat. It is among the most famous gardens in England and is designated Grade I on Historic England’s register of historic parks and gardens.
It was bought by Sackville-West in 1930, and over the next thirty years, working with, and later succeeded by, a series of notable head gardeners, she and Nicolson transformed a farmstead of “squalor and slovenly disorder” into one of the world’s most influential gardens.
Following Sackville-West’s death in 1962, the estate was donated to the National Trust. It is one of the Trust’s most popular properties, with nearly 200,000 visitors in 2017.
In the ancient Sissinghurst Castle’s library, there are 20 different writing rooms like the one pictured above. Dating back to around 1700, the library’s books sit on shelves made from a rare wood called coromandel.
8. The Trinity College Library in Dublin, Ireland.
The Trinity College Library in Dublin, IrelandThe Library of Trinity College Dublin (Irish: Leabharlann Choláiste na Tríonóide) serves Trinity College and the University of Dublin. It is a legal deposit or “copyright library”, under which, publishers in Ireland must deposit a copy of all their publications there, without charge. It is the only Irish ancient library to hold such rights for works published in the United Kingdom.
The oldest library building, now known as the Old Library, is Thomas Burgh’s magnum opus. Construction began in 1712. A large building which took twenty years to complete in its original form, it towered over the university and city after its completion in 1732.
Even today, surrounded by similarly scaled buildings, it is imposing and dominates the view of the university from Nassau Street. The Book of Kells is located in the Old Library, along with the Book of Durrow, the Garland of Howth and other ancient texts.
Also incorporating the Long Room, the Old Library is one of Ireland’s biggest tourist attractions and holds thousands of rare, and in many cases very early, volumes. In the 18th century, the college received the Brian Boru harp, one of the three surviving medieval Gaelic harps, and a national symbol of Ireland, which is now housed in the Library.
9. Hereford Cathedral Library in, England.
Hereford Cathedral Library is a working theological lending and reference library located in Hereford Cathedral, it also holds books and manuscripts of major importance to the history of the county of Herefordshire. The Library is also well known for its chained books as it is the only library of this type to survive with all of the chains, rods and locks still intact.
During the reign of Elizabeth I, in 1582, a commission investigating the cathedral found that the collection, gathered since the 12th century, was poorly organised and poorly kept. In 1590 the whole library was moved to the Lady Chapel, and in 1611 the Chained Library (with books in manuscript chained to their places) was established by Thomas Thornton.
Thornton, who was canon of Hereford from 1583 onwards and vice-chancellor of Oxford University in 1583 and 1599, was the first to chain books in the library.
William Brewster bequeathed the collection to St John’s College, Oxford. Many books were added in the 17th century and in 1678 the collection from the Jesuit College at Cwm, Llanrothal, Wales, joined the library when the college was shut down following the invasion by John Arnold of Monmouthshire.
10. The Lambeth Library in Canterbury, England.
Founded in 1610, the Lambeth Library features books from the 9th century to today.
When Peter the Great visited in 1698, he supposedly said that the library was the most astonishing thing in England and he had “never thought there were so many books in all the world.”
1200 and has since served as the archbishop’s London residence. The site is bounded by Lambeth Palace Road to the west and Lambeth Road to the south, but unlike all surrounding land is excluded from the parish of North Lambeth.
The garden park is listed and resembles Archbishop’s Park, a neighboring public park; however, it was a larger area with a notable orchard until the early 19th century.
The former church in front of its entrance has been converted to the Garden Museum. The south bank of the Thames along this reach, not part of ancient historic London, developed slowly because the land was low and sodden: it was called Lambeth Marsh, as far downriver as the present Blackfriars Road.
The name “Lambeth” embodies “hithe”, a landing on the river: archbishops came and went by water, as did John Wycliff, who was tried here for heresy. In the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, the palace was attacked.
The oldest remaining part of the palace is the chapel which was built in the Early English Gothic architectural style. Lollards’ Tower, which retains evidence of its use as a prison in the 17th century, dates from 1435 to 1440.
The front is an early Tudor brick gatehouse built by Cardinal John Morton and completed in 1495. Cardinal Pole lay in state in the palace for 40 days after he died there in 1558. The fig tree in the palace courtyard is possibly grown from a slip taken from one of the White Marseille fig trees here for centuries (reputedly planted by Cardinal Pole).
In 1786, there were three ancient figs, two “nailed against the wall” and still noted in 1826 as “two uncommonly fine traditionally reported to have been planted by Cardinal Pole, and fixed against that part of the palace believed to have been founded by him.
They are of the white Marseilles sort, and still bear delicious fruit. On the south side of the building, in a small private garden, is another tree of the same kind and age.” By 1882, their place had been taken by several massive offshoots.
The notable orchard of the medieval period has somewhat given way to a mirroring public park adjoining and built-up roads of housing and offices. The palace gardens were listed grade II in October 1987.
Happy Reading!!!
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