Cultural Building sights in Europe
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Nationalbibliothek
The Nationalbibliothek (National Library) was once the imperial library and is now the largest library in Vienna. The real reason to visit these esteemed halls of knowledge is to gaze on the Prunksaal (Grand Hall). Commissioned by Charles VI, this baroque hall was the brainchild of Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, who died the year the first brick was laid, and finished by his son Joseph in 1735. Leather-bound scholarly tomes line the walls, and the upper storey of shelves is flanked by an elegantly curving wood balcony. Rare ancient volumes (mostly 15th century) are stored within glass cabinets, with pages opened to beautifully illustrated passages of text. A statue o…
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Municipal House
Prague’s most exuberant and sensual building stands on the site of the Royal Court, seat of Bohemia’s kings from 1383 to 1483 (when Vladislav II moved to Prague Castle), which was demolished at the end of the 19th century. Between 1906 and 1912 the Municipal House was built in its place – a lavish joint effort by around 30 leading artists of the day, creating a cultural centre that was the architectural climax of the Czech National Revival.
Restored in the 1990s after decades of neglect during the communist era, the entire building was a labour of love, every detail of design and decoration carefully considered, every painting and sculpture loaded with symbolism. Th…
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Velha Universidade
The Velha Universidade consists of a series of remarkable, 16th- to 18th-century buildings, all set around the vast Patio das Escolas. You enter the patio by way of the elegant, 17th-century Porta Férrea, which occupies the same site as the main gate to Coimbra's Moorish stronghold. In the square is a statue of João III, who turns his back on a sweeping view of the city and the river. It was he who re-established the university in Coimbra in 1537 and invited big-shot scholars to teach here.
The square's most prominent feature is the much-photographed 18th-century clock tower. This tower is nicknamed a cabra (the goat) because, when it chimed to mark the end of studies, …
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National Memorial to the Victims of Post-Heydrich Terror
In 1942 seven Czech paratroopers who were involved in the assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich hid in the crypt of the Church of Sts Cyril & Methodius for three weeks after the killing, until their hiding place was betrayed by the Czech traitor Karel Čurda. The Germans besieged the church, first attempting to smoke the paratroopers out and then flooding the church with fire hoses. Three paratroopers were killed in the ensuing fight; the other four took their own lives rather than surrender to the Germans. The crypt now houses a moving memorial to the men, with an exhibit and video about Nazi persecution of the Czechs. In the crypt itself you can still see t…
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Det Kongelige Bibliotek
The Royal Library has two very distinct parts: the original, 19th-century red-brick building and the breathtaking granite-and-glass extension, completed in 1999. The latter, nicknamed the Black Diamond, is the main draw. People come simply to marvel at the interior with its giant glass wall and views across the harbour, or to enjoy a bite in the cafe or the minimalist Søren K restaurant. You need to be a member to access what is the largest library in Scandinavia, containing 21 million books. Among them are original manuscripts and diaries by Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen (including the fairy-tale writer’s unsuccessful application to work at the library). The Bl…
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Linen Hall Library
Opposite City Hall, on North Donegall Sq, is the Linen Hall Library. Established in 1788 to 'improve the mind and excite a spirit of general inquiry', the library was moved from its original home in the White Linen Hall to the present building a century later. Thomas Russell, the first librarian, was a founding member of the United Irishmen and a close friend of Wolfe Tone. Russell was hanged in 1803 after Robert Emmet's abortive rebellion.
The library houses some 260,000 books, more than half of which are part of its important Irish and local-studies collection. The political collection consists of pretty much everything that has been written about Northern Irish politic…
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Pannonhalma Abbey
Founded by Benedictine monks almost 1000 years ago, Pannonhalma Abbey has been destroyed and rebuilt many times and is now a crazy quilt of Turkish, Romanesque and Gothic architectural styles. The interior is beautiful despite the butchery, and includes a neoclassical library containing 300,000 volumes, making it the largest private library in Hungary.
Also inside the abbey are historical archives holding some of the earliest surviving examples of written Hungarian; a gallery with works by Dutch, Italian and Austrian masters from the 16th to 18th centuries; and, above the red-marble arched doorway, a fresco depicting the patron, St Martin of Tours.
Look down to the right …
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Libreria Piccolomini
Off the north aisle of the Duomo Nuovo, the Libreria Piccolomini is one of the cathedral's great treasures. Pope Pius III built this compact hall to house the books of his uncle, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who became Pope Pius II; only a series of huge choral tomes remains on display.
The walls of the hall have vividly coloured narrative frescoes by Bernardino Pinturicchio. They depict events in the life of Piccolomini, starting from his early days as a secretary to an Italian bishop on a mission to Basle, through to his ordination as pope and eventually his death in Ancona while trying to mount a crusade against the Turks. In the centre of the hall is a group of statues k…
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Biblioteca Joanina
The Old University's library, Biblioteca Joanina seems far too extravagant and distracting for actual study, with its rosewood, ebony and jacaranda tables, its gilt Chinoiserie bookshelves and elaborately frescoed ceilings. The library was a gift from João V himself in the early 18th century. Its 300,000 books, ancient and leather-bound, deal with law, philosophy and theology, though they might as well be painted onto the walls for all the hands-on study they receive now.
Visitors are admitted in small numbers and on a timetable and some rooms may be closed during degree ceremonies. The turismo might urge you to book a few days ahead, but you still may be able to get in …
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Strahov Monastery
In 1140 Vladislav II founded Strahov Monastery (Strahovský klášter) for the Premonstratensian order. The present monastery buildings, completed in the 17th and 18th centuries, functioned until the communist government closed them down and imprisoned most of the monks; they returned in 1990. Inside the main gate is the 1612 Church of St Roch (kostel sv Rocha), which is now an art gallery, and the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady (kostel Nanebevzetí Panny Marie), built in 1143 and heavily decorated in the 18th century in the baroque style; Mozart is said to have played the organ here. Other attractions here include the Miniature Museum, the Strahov Library and the Strah…
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State Archives
The 16th-century Sponza Palace houses the State Archives, which contain a priceless collection of manuscripts dating back nearly a thousand years. This superb structure is a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance styles beginning with an exquisite Renaissance portico resting on six columns. The 1st floor has late-Gothic windows and the 2nd-floor windows are in a Renaissance style, with an alcove containing a statue of St Vlaho. Also inside is the Memorial Room of the Defenders of Dubrovnik, a heartbreaking collection of portraits of young people who perished between 1991 and 1995.
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Netherlands Media Art Institute
From the hilarious and the ridiculous to the deep and the experimental, there’s always something interesting in this gallery’s changing exhibits. Don’t expect to see works by the hit makers or TV directors of tomorrow, though. The institute is specifically about video as art; there’s an artist-in-residence program if you get inspired. The collection numbers some 1500 works, assembled since the institute was established in 1978. The mediatheek (admission free) works like a library, complete with librarians to advise you; it's open weekdays from 1pm to 5pm.
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Reformed College
North of the Great Church stands the Reformed College, built in 1816, the site of a prestigious secondary school and theological college since the Middle Ages. Downstairs, there are exhibits on religious art and sacred objects (including a 17th-century chalice made from a coconut) and on the school's history, where 'early to bed, early to rise' was the motto.
Upstairs is the relatively bland 650,000-volume library and the bright, white oratory, where the breakaway National Assembly met in 1849 and Hungary's postwar provisional government was declared in 1944.
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Royal Geographical Society
Just east of the Royal Albert Hall is the headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society, founded in 1830 and housed in a Queen Anne–style red-brick edifice (1874) easily identified by the statues of explorers David Livingstone and Ernest Shackleton outside. The society holds a regular talks program (especially on Monday evenings) and photography exhibitions, while the Foyle Reading Room offers access to the society’s collection of more than half a million maps, photographs, books and manuscripts. Enter from Exhibition Rd.
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Women’s Library
Just round the corner from the Whitechapel Gallery, the Women’s Library, part of the London Metropolitan University, is a unique repository for all manner of books and documents related to women’s history. It contains a reading room open to the public, as well as archive and museum collections, and organises talks and special exhibitions (last seen – Between the Covers: Women’s Magazines and Their Reader). The building is a modern take on the former Goulston Square Wash House, one of the oldest public baths in London.
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Institut de France
The French Institute, created in 1795, brought together five of France’s academies of arts and sciences. The most famous of these is the Académie Française (French Academy), founded in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu. Its 40 members, known as the Immortels (Immortals), have the Herculean (some say impossible) task of safeguarding the purity of the French language. The domed building housing the institute, across the Seine from the Louvre’s eastern end, is a masterpiece of French neoclassical architecture.
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University Library
Today’s library is a concrete hulk, not nearly the beautiful building you’d expect from such a historic site, but its background is fascinating. Citizen militias used to meet here: the ‘hand-bow’ (handboog) militia in No 421, and the ‘foot-bow’ (voetboog) militia in No 425, which also served as headquarters for the Dutch West India Company. Now you know where the names of the nearby streets Handboogstraat and Voetboogstraat come from. Their firing ranges at the back reached to Kalverstraat.
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Municipal Library
In the left wing of the Musée Fesch and entered via rue du Cardinal Fesch, Ajaccio's Municipal Library , built in 1868, merits a browse. The two lions guarding the entrance (yet another donation by Cardinal Fesch) are modelled on the beasts that stand watch over the tomb of Pope Clement XIII at St Peter's in Rome. Inside, within the 30m-long reading room, uniform leather-bound volumes stretching to the ceiling, wooden ladders and an 18m-long central table speak of serious-minded research.
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Cabinet des Médailles et Monnaies
Housed in the original home of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France is this enormous hoard of coins, medals and tokens numbering more than 500, 000. There’s also an important collection of antiques, including items confiscated during the French Revolution from Ste-Chapelle and the abbey at St-Denis, including silverware, jewellery and the so-called Dagobert’s Throne, dating from the 7th century, on which French kings were once crowned.
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Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
A Gutenberg Bible, the original Carmina Burana and 1000-year-old prayer books are part of the amazing archive of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Founded in 1558 by Duke Albrecht V, it's in another Gärtner building and brims with 9.1 million volumes, nearly 400,000 maps and subscriptions to over 42,000 periodicals. Yup, that would make it one of the largest in the German-speaking world. Check it out, if only for the free art exhibits.
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Stadsarchief
The corner of Herengracht and Vijzelstraat is dominated by the colossal Stadsarchief, occupying a 1923 bank building. When you step inside head to the left, to the enormous tiled basement vault and displays of archive gems such as the 1942 police report on the theft of Anne Frank’s bicycle. A small cinema at the back shows vintage films about the city. Upstairs, a fantastic bookshop sells city-oriented tomes.
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Palazzo d'Usini
North of Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, Via Cesare Battisti leads into the leafy Piazza Tola. It used to be the centre and main market of the medieval town, and you'll still find a market here on weekday mornings. When the Spaniards were in charge they burnt heretics here, looking on from fine palazzos such as the 1577 Palazzo d'Usini. It's a rare example of 16th-century civil architecture in Sardinia and now houses the public library.
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Hadrian’s Library
Once the most luxurious public building in the city, Hadrian’s library was erected around AD 132. It had an internal courtyard and pool and was bordered by 100 columns. The building was destroyed in AD 267 during the Herulian invasion. The remains of Megali Panagia, believed to be the oldest Christian church in Athens, can be seen in the garden, including parts of the mosaic floor. During the Ottoman period it was a bazaar.
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Utvandrarnas Hus
Utvandrarnas Hus boasts engrossing displays on the emigration of over one million Swedes to America (1850–1930). It also includes a replica of Vilhelm Moberg’s office and original manuscripts of his famous emigration novels. The centre also houses an excellent research facility (open Tuesday to Friday only, reservations advised) for those tracing their Swedish ancestors.
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Old Library
Just off the Mob Quad is a 13th-century chapel and the Old Library, the oldest medieval library in use. It is said that Professor JRR Tolkien spent many hours here while writing The Lord of the Rings. Other literary giants associated with the college include TS Eliot and Louis MacNeice.
If you're visiting in summer, look out for posters advertising candlelit concerts in the chapel.
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