Biblioteca Joanina

The Biblioteca Joanina has a night shift of bats. A colony lives inside the library and eats the insects that come out after dark. Only one other library is known to rely on the same arrangement, the palace library at Mafra. Each evening staff cover the furniture with sheets of leather, and each morning they clean up after the bats.

The bats are the last line of a defence built into the walls. King John V of Portugal, after whom the library is named, began it in 1717 at the heart of the University of Coimbra. It was finished by 1728 and received its first books in 1750. The outer walls are about 2.11 metres thick, and a teak door helps keep the rooms at 18 to 20 °C with humidity near 60 per cent. The oak of the structure is dense, and its smell repels paper-eating insects. It follows the old rule we describe in why modern libraries look nothing like old ones: the building existed to protect the collection.

Behind the white stone portal, which carries the national coat of arms, lie three rooms divided by decorated arches. Two tiers of shelving in gilded or painted woods, mostly from Brazil, carry chinoiserie motifs, under ceilings painted by Simões Ribeiro and Vicente Nunes. All of it is the work of Portuguese artists, with one exception: the monumental portrait of the king painted by Domenico Duprà in 1725.

The books, mostly from the 16th to the 18th century, are not browsed. You request a volume and give your reason. If the request is approved, a member of staff carries it to the university’s General Library for you to read there.