Atlas of Libraries

The Atlas is a catalogue of libraries worth knowing about, from collections of clay tablets to buildings opened in the last few years. Each library has one record. It tells you where the library is, when it was founded, who designed it and what it holds. A photograph and a short text of our own explain what makes the place matter.

The records are grouped into halls by kind of library: ancient and lost collections, monasteries, Renaissance and university libraries, great reading rooms, national libraries, modern buildings, and the ones that fit no pattern. Browse a hall below, or open any record to read it in full.

The Atlas is a reference, not a set of essays. Longer stories live in our articles, in sections such as Libraries of the World and Library Architecture. When an article covers a library, the library’s record links to it.

The facts come from Wikidata and Wikipedia, written up in our own words, and each record lists its sources at the foot of the page. The photographs come from Wikimedia Commons and are published under their authors’ licences, with the author and licence credited on every record. When a fact cannot be established, such as a single founding year for an ancient library, we leave it out rather than guess.