The Most Visually Stunning And Intellectually Captivating Libraries Of The World

“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries” – Rene Descartes

Libraries have gotten a bad reputation over the years, particularly in popular media. They’re depicted as boring, quiet, stuffy places where people go by obligation to complete school work, or find an abandoned aisle in the upper floors for some…extracurricular activity.

Libraries are, however, one of the most captivating places to visit when traveling. Societies pride themselves on the aggregate whole of their cultural and intellectual knowledge, and their libraries are the storage receptacles for that knowledge, in a medium that we might be losing touch with: books.

Some people are describing tangible, physical books printed on paper as “old and outdated technology”, but I’ll take the smell, look, and feel of a newly minted book over a digital copy on a glass and plastic reader any day.

There’s no getting around it, there are people who simply refuse to give the written word the acclamation it deserves in human history, and actually flaunt the fact that they don’t read (we’ve all come across these deluded individuals on Facebook one time or another).

But for those of use who still value the inherent gold mine that are books, libraries can be amazing places, and it isn’t just about the books that are on the shelves either. To pronounce their collection of knowledge to the outside world, cities, municipalities, universities, and even countries as a whole implement marvelous architecture and design into the building of their libraries, to appropriately suit the wealth of knowledge that they hold.

Here are a few captivating libraries of the world.

The Royal Portugese Reading Library, In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Melk Monastery Library, Melk, Austria

Internet entrepreneur Jay Walker’s Private Library, complete with a Sputnik 1 satellite, and a chandelier from a James Bond movie.

Central Library, Seattle, Washington, USA.

For more images, check out a 65 page SlideShare presentation HERE.

And for those of you who wish libraries were decorated and adorned with more than renaissance style art and old books, here’s a video of Alison Brie doing some espionage at her college bibliotheca.

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