Library sights in Paris
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Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Rising up from the banks of the Seine are the four glass towers of the controversial, €2 billion National Library of France, conceived by the late president François Mitterrand as a ‘wonder of the modern world’ and opened in 1988.
No expense was spared to carry out a plan that many said defied logic. While many of the books and historical documents were shelved in the sun-drenched, 23-storey, 79m-high towers – shaped like half-open books – readers sat in artificially lit basement halls built around a light well ‘courtyard’ of 140 50-year-old pines, trucked in from the countryside. The towers have since been fitted with a complex (and expensive) shutter system, but …
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Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris
Continue north on rue Pavée (Paved Street), the first cobbled road in Paris. At No 24 stands Hôtel Lamoignon, built between 1585 and 1612 for Diane de France (1538–1619), duchess of Angoulême and legitimised daughter of Henri II. It now houses the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris.
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