Description
According to the
The illustration from the Codex Amiatinus, one of the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Bible, shows a scriptor in front of an open armarium
In his treatise “De re aedificatoria”, written between 1442 and 1452 and based in part on Vitruvius’ writings, Leon Battista Alberti further differentiates between public and private libraries. In a private residence (“works of individuals”), the library should be adjacent to the husband’s bedroom. Like Vitruvius, Alberti supports the notion of orienting the library eastwards in “the direction of the sunrise at equinox”.[2] In Book Eight on “Ornament to Public Secular Buildings”, Alberti has more to say about libraries, remarking on what they contain but revealing nothing about the building or the room itself: “The principal ornament to any library will be a large collection of rare books …. It would also be an ornament to have mathematical instruments … or the map that Aristarchus is said to have made of the whole world and all its provinces engraved upon a metal plate.”[3] Alberti may be referring here to the descriptions of libraries from Antiquity that he makes mention of elsewhere in Book Eight.
It would seem that up until the early modern period, libraries had not yet developed into a separate building with specific typical characteristics. That certainly applies to the Baroque period up until well into the 18th century: libraries were usually housed within a larger building or complex of buildings such as a castle or monastery. It was not until the 19th century that the library as we know it today came about: landmark buildings that are a characteristic element of the townscape.
The typology of the library developed initially from its internal structure outwards. Over centuries, it was defined by the design of its interior: beginning as a simple room for storing written scrolls, it later became a place to study books. This simple space would later turn into a central reading room. The appearance of libraries in the urban realm as buildings in their own right, i.e. no longer as part of another building complex, is closely connected to their being made accessible to the broader public. For centuries, libraries were only accessible to those who could read and write. Today, libraries are open for everyone and their users are not just from the educated classes.
Study Libraries in the Middle Ages
In the Romanesque period, libraries were only to be found in monasteries. As most of the books were liturgical scriptures for services, the books were kept near the altar in the sacristy. The books were therefore part of the church’s sacred items and stored securely in cupboards or almeries in the sacristy. In many cases they were stored in rooms directly over the sacristy. As the stock of books gradually expanded to include theological and juridical works for the monks’ education, it became less and less necessary to house them in the sacristy, and over time the library moved to a position on the east side of the church but still close to the choir and choir stools. The book presses served solely as a repository for the books, the monks withdrawing to their cells for the purposes of study.
The plan of the Monastery of St. Gall is instructive for the development of the library. Conceived as a kind of ideal plan around the time of the Benedictine reforms shortly before the year 800 AD, the plan shows an almost square two-story building next to the presbytery on the northeast transept. The legend says “
Plan of the Monastery of St. Gall from around 800 AD showing one of the earliest examples of a separate library building (gray)
The plan of the Monastery of St. Gall shows one of the earliest examples of a free-standing building for the scriptorium and library – at least in an ideal plan. We have no knowledge of whether such a building was actually built. When the library was not located above the sacristy, it was instead placed between the choir and the chapter house in the eastern wing of the cloister.
With the founding of the first universities, the purpose of libraries changed from being that of a mere repository to becoming a place of study. Because the libraries were now made available to a broader section of society, the commonly used writings were laid out on raked lectern-like desks and anchored with chains. A rectangular room with windows along the long sides and the raked desks arranged at right angles began to crystallize.
One of the first libraries of this kind was in the Sorbonne in Paris in 1289, of which all that remains is a written account: it was a separate hall-like building that contained a room measuring 40 × 12 paces with 19 windows along each long side and 28 inclined desks. This was the so-called
This type of narrow, long room as a space for study quickly became the dominant arrangement in the monasteries of the day, especially among the mendicant orders for whom scholarly study was part of the order’s rules. To begin with, the library spaces were still located in the region of the east cloister, near to the chapter house, and often over it. But as the libraries began to attract visitors from outside the order, their position shifted gradually during the 15th century, usually into the upper story of a side wing east of the quadrangle. This enclosed position of the library can be seen in monasteries throughout the 16th century.
The free-standing library building of the Augustinian Friars’ monastery in Erfurt, Germany, built at the beginning of the 16th century is an exception. Its plain, unadorned exterior is reminiscent of a free-standing chapel building. And indeed, libraries were also known to have been built above chapels.
Libraries in the Renaissance – First Public Appearances
With the Renaissance in Italy came the creation of a large number of new representative public buildings in the powerful cities and city-states. These new buildings also included isolated instances of library buildings, commissioned without exception by well-educated and influential persons.
In 1524, Pope Clement VII, formerly Cardinal Giulio de Medici, commissioned Michelangelo to construct a library for the valuable manuscripts owned by the Medici family that until then had resided in the family’s Palazzo in Florence. The plan to build such a library goes back to the year 1519 in conjunction with plans to build a new sacristy on the transept of San Lorenzo as a tomb for the Medici family. The church and monastery of San Lorenzo are located in the direct vicinity of the Medici Palazzo. Plans for the library were resurrected with Guilio’s elevation to the papacy but were again delayed due to lack of money and the library eventually opened in 1571. Following medieval precedence, the library was located adjacent to the cloister of San Lorenzo, but the entrance vestibule, the
The Laurentian Library, Florence, Michelangelo, 1571, was built to house the manuscripts belonging to the Medici family. The vestibule, with its cascade of steps leading up to the library, forms a prestigious entrance.
Parallel to Michelangelo’s Biblioteca Laurenziana, another library was being built in Venice on the Piazzetta opposite the Doge’s Palace: the Libreria Vecchia or Biblioteca Marciana. Started in 1537 on the side facing the Campanile, it was built to plans by Jacopo Sansovino and completed after his death by Vincenzo Scamozzi from 1588–1591. It was commissioned by the powerful Procurators of San Marco, who were the custodians of St. Mark’s wealth and goods and were the most influential public officials in the Venetian State. The building was originally designed to close the gap between the Zecca (the mint) at the Baccino di San Marco and the Campanile. Only after construction had begun did the Procurators decide to house a valuable collection of Greek and Latin manuscripts in the building. Sansovino developed a plan for a vast reading room on the upper story of the seven bays that adjoined the Campanile, reached by a sumptuous foyer in the central axis of the building.
Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, Jacopo Sansovino and Vincenzo Scamozzi, 1591. The building opposite the Doge’s Palace closes the square
Although the building was not originally erected to house a collection of books, it is remarkable that a library was even conceived for such a prominent and representative building in the city’s innermost bastion of power. The building’s appearance follows typical classical patterns, with stout doric columns on the ground floor and slender, richly decorated ionic columns on the upper story, characterizing the library as a public building. Sansovino followed Alberti’s recommendations, orienting the library eastwards. Like in the Laurentian Library, the main room is an elongated hall free of columns. The room is decorated with a series of scholarly iconographic paintings: personifications of music, wisdom and fame on the roof and a cycle of philosophers’ portraits around the walls.
In 1603, the learned Cardinal Federico Borromeo of Milan, who was a patron of Jan Brueghel the Elder – the so-called “Flower” Brueghel –, commissioned the building of a library to house his collection of 30,000 books and 15,000 manuscripts from all over the world. The library was named after Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan. The entrance to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana opens onto the Piazza San Sepolcro with a projecting entrance
Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Lelio Buzzi and Francesco Maria Richini, 1618. Cardinal Federico Borromeo commissioned the building of a library to house his extensive collection of books and manuscripts. The projecting entrance building announces the building to its surroundings. On the interior the open shelves act as walls.
However, what is most exceptional about this building is its open shelving in which the books and manuscripts are stored. They appear to cover, indeed to constitute, the entire surfaces of the wall. A gallery running around the perimeter provides easier access to the upper bookshelves. The Biblioteca Ambrosiana is probably the first library to be equipped with shelving of this kind. From this point on, all of the fundamental elements that constitute a library had been developed: a long, column-free space, open shelves and galleries. These elements were then further refined over the course of the Baroque era. The galleries in particular developed into elements that defined the space, and shelves transitioned from being items of furniture into an integral part of the walls.
From the above it is clear that the library interior was subject to a process of continual development, but no such progression can be observed for the library’s outward appearance. In this context, it is instructive to take a short look at the library in El Escorial in Madrid. The Bibliotheca Escorialensis is unique in that it is both an ecclesiastical as well as a royal library: the complex of El Escorial is both a monastery as well as a royal palace built by King Philip II of Spain. The church lies in the center of the complex, framed by a courtyard on either side with several courtyards arranged in front as a means of entrance. The library is housed in the wing facing the street over the main entrance portal. It is located on axis with the church, directly on the boundary between the royal and the monastic areas. Colossal doric and ionic columns demarcate the presence of the library on the building’s facade. Above the main cornice, the facade is set back slightly, evoking the impression of a church front. The long reading room with a low barrel vault and lunette caps probably derives not from Alberti’s understanding of the temples of Antiquity but from its origin in the royal gallery of the castle building. Free-standing cabinets and globes are arranged along the central axis of the room.
The library in El Escorial near Madrid by Juan de Herrera, completed in 1584, is a unique combination of ecclesiastical and royal library.
While the Baroque period did not bring forth any further fundamental typological advancements, the libraries developed into sumptuous
In the Benedictine monastery at Neresheim, built from 1699 by Michael Wiedemann, the library is arranged above the refectory, the two forming a spur that extends out of the plan, its built mass acting as a counterpart to the church.
In the Benedictine abbey at Göttweig in Austria the library is located in the east wing of the cloister courtyard and is arranged perfectly on axis with the choir and the adjacent chapter house. Here, however, the central
In the Benedictine abbey at Göttweig, the library is housed in the east wing of the cloister. In this case, the central risalit is wider than the reading room behind and therefore does not expressly denote the library on the exterior of the building.
The lavishly decorated library at Göttweig was established when the abbey was rebuilt from 1718 onwards according to plans by Lucas von Hildebrandt.
This can be seen in two characteristic examples that illustrate two of the most commonly employed spatial systems of Baroque churches. The library at the Benedictine abbey at Wiblingen near Ulm, Germany, is believed to have been built by Christian Wiedemann in the mid-18th century. Its elegantly winding gallery with curved balconies that project into the room, rests on 32 scagliola columns made to resemble red and green marble. Standing between them on low plinths are wooden statues, rendered entirely in white, that portray allegories of the virtues and the disciplines.
Library at the Benedictine abbey of Wiblingen, Christian Wiedemann, 1744. The gallery rests on red and green columns, its curved balconies projecting into the room.
In St. Gallen in Switzerland, construction began for the new Abbey of St. Gall around 1760, which included the abbey library completed in 1766 to a design by the architect Peter Thumb from Vorarlberg. For the church interior, the architect developed a system of pilasters that connect the perimeter galleries, a system that he also applied to the library’s reading room. Here the pilasters are completely lined with bookcases.
The Abbey Library of St. Gall, Peter Thumb, 1766. The system of wall pilasters used in the church to connect the galleries was also applied to the library where they are lined with bookcases.
The ultimate example of Baroque splendor is the imperial library in the Hofburg palace in Vienna. Soon after his inauguration, Emperor Charles VI embarked on an extensive program of building, which included a library building for the Habsburg dynasty’s extensive collections of books, which until then had been stored in the Hofburg. In 1722, the Emperor commissioned Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach to construct a new library making use of an existing riding school building from 1681. As such, the wing in which the library was to be housed was predetermined. Fischer von Erlach elected to introduce a new element in the middle of the central axis of the elongated rectangular wing, the top two stories of which house a magnificent oval reading room with a high-domed roof. Fischer therefore gave the building a new definition of its own, decorated on the outside with vast ionic orders, and containing a dramatic interior space, the
Imperial library, Hofburg palace, Vienna, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, from 1722. The Splendid Hall is tripartite with two side wings and an oval dome.
In the 17th century, the idea of the library as a centrally planned building gained increasing favor. As part of modernization work on the renaissance Blankenburg Castle in the Harz region of Germany in 1705, the court architect of Brunswick, Hermann Korb, installed a library above the castle chapel, a square plan with an octagonal arrangement of free-standing columns within it. This centrally planned arrangement may have been more a matter of chance than anything but it probably influenced Korb’s later design for the Court Library in Wolfenbüttel designed a year later and built from 1706 to 1710. The Court Library was a two-story rectangular building containing an oval rotunda with two galleries, one above the other. The building’s exterior and interior were comparatively plain and unadorned due to a lack of money, which also resulted in sections of the building being built as a timber frame construction, which in turn ultimately led to the building being demolished in 1887. A lantern with 24 windows ensured the room was well-illuminated. The two galleries provided ample space for books.
Court Library, Wolfenbüttel, Hermann Korb, 1710. Painting by Ludwig Tacke.
However, the idea of housing a library in a centrally planned building had a greater significance. In documents from the 18th century, the library is also referred to as the “Pantheon of Wolfenbüttel”. Ever since the Renaissance, centralized building layouts have been regarded as an ideal figure for buildings, and the most famous of these is certainly the Roman Pantheon. In the fourth of Palladio’s books on architecture, printed in Venice in 1570, he speaks of centrally planned churches as being a man-made “image of God’s world”. As such, what better way to house the “knowledge of the world” than also in an ideal building figure? Correspondences of these kinds played an important role in the age of early Classicism because they showed that it was about more than the simple resurrection of models from Antiquity but rather their interpretation through the lens of the Renaissance. The pantheon epitomizes the adoption of ideal forms in architecture. This reference took on particular importance as the library began to liberate itself from the confines of the monastery and palace and became a public educational institution in its own right. And it was here, as before in the Middle Ages, that the universities were to play a key role.
Christopher Wren designed a building of such universal aspirations, modeled on the Pantheon in Rome, in 1676 for Trinity College Library in Cambridge. His initial design shows a square building with an ionic portico arranged in front of a rotunda crowned by a dome and lantern. The interior envisaged the colloquium in the plinth, with a two-story library above it with bookcases extending to the base of the dome, its windows allowing light to stream into the interior. Possibly Hermann Korb was aware of Wren’s first unbuilt design and used it as inspiration for his own building.
A pupil of Wren’s and a scholar of Palladian architecture, James Gibbs, completed the construction of a library to house the collection of the famous doctor John Radcliffe in 1747. Built in the campus of Oxford University, it was known as the Radcliffe Camera. The main two-story room is set upon a rustic plinth and illuminated by a tholobate and dome. The bookcases are arranged in the galleries that run around the perimeter of the space behind the arcades.
Radcliffe Camera, Oxford, James Gibbs, 1747. A two-story main room is illuminated by a domed roof.
Etienne-Louis Boullée drew up a design for an ideal form for a public library in 1784 that features a monumental domed central space. The bookshelves are arranged beneath the vast semi-circular dome in four staggered tiers beneath one another in the manner of rows of theater seating. Boullée became increasingly influential as a teacher and theorist at the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées from 1778 to 1788, where he developed an inimitable abstract style, which he developed to grand proportions, but was always borne by the idea that the building must fulfil its function. It is during this period that he also produced a design for the National Library, which applied his earlier idea for a public library to an elongated rectangular volume. Boullée’s visions would have a strong influence on later generations’ ideas about the design of library reading rooms.
Etienne-Louis Boullée: initial design for a public library in Paris, 1784. The cross section shows a domed central space. (left); Etienne-Louis Boullée, design for the reading room of the National Library, 1785
The French National Library, designed by Henri Labrouste in 1862, completed a section of the Louvre on the Rue Richelieu resulting in a coherent ensemble. The tall arcades of the central oval reading room are made of slender iron columns that carry a shallow vault with its large oval skylight. The bookshelves line the walls behind the arcades from the floor to the height of the main cornice. The reading room – which Labrouste also realized in a similar linear arrangement for the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève (1843–1850) – exploited the possibilities offered by the introduction of iron as a building material and became a model for many later reading rooms until well into the 20th century.
Henri Labrouste, French National Library, Paris, 1868. The domed construction of the large reading room.
Henri Labrouste, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, 1850. The reading room totals 1,780 m² and is a cast iron construction.
This brief historical overview shows clearly that, unlike other kinds of buildings, no single typological model has developed for the library over the ages. The reading room – as a repository for books as well as a place for study – remains the central pivotal space of a library and its formal elaboration has always dictated the design of libraries. Consequently, libraries have always been developed from the inside outwards.
Footnotes
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, The Ten Books on Architecture, Book VI, Chapter IV, Sec. 1, translated by Morris Hicky Morgan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20239
Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988, p. 153.
Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, 1988, op. cit., p. 287.
Walter Horn, Ernest Born, The Plan of St. Gall: A Study of the Architecture and Economy and Life in a Paradigmatic Carolingian Monastery, 3 vols. (California Studies in the History of Art 19). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979, vol. 1, p. 147.
Konrad Rückbrod, Universität und Kollegium. Baugeschichte und Bautyp. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977, p. 87.
Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, 1988, op. cit., p. 379.
Originally published in: Nolan Lushington, Wolfgang Rudorf, Liliane Wong, Libraries: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2016.