The Most Fascinating Libraries of the World 03 - Bibliotheque Nationale de France

I visited a friend's blog one day and I was literary blown over by a picture of one of the most fascinating libraries around - Trinity College Library in Dublin, Ireland. It also gave me an idea of a series of posts about the best, the most beautiful, the strangest and the biggest libraries there are. The libraries that can make you drool, where you would be able to spend an indefinite period of time without noticing, where you would like to live and die till the end of the world (if they only served coffee and cake that is). Perhaps you can't visit them all but what is the Internet for? I'll try to illustrate my posts as well as it is only possible, providing, I hope, a nice tour for every visitor around. Enjoy!


Bibliotheque Nationale de France (or the National French Library) is located in Paris and his current president is Bruno Racine. It has two main venues: buildings on the Rue de Richelieu, constructed in 1868, and a new venue, planned as a grand project of the elderly president Francois Mitterrand. Construction of the new library ran into huge cost overruns and technical difficulties related to its high-rise design, so much so that it is commonly referred to as the "TGB" or "Très Grande Bibliothèque" (i.e. "Very Large Library," a sarcastic allusion to France's successful high-speed rail system, the TGV). After the move of the major collections from the rue de Richelieu, the National Library of France was inaugurated on 15 December 1996. It contains more than ten million volumes but, suprisingly, doesn't maintain a wireless network.

Site Richelieu:

Site Mitterrand:

Now: the old or the new? Which would you like to visit?