Bibliotheca Alexandrina

About

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Latin, 'Library of Alexandria'; Egyptian Arabic: , romanized: Maktabat al-’Iskandariyya, Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [mæktæb(e)t eskendeejjæ]) (BA) is a major library and cultural center on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in Alexandria, Egypt. It is a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria, once one of the largest libraries worldwide, which was lost in antiquity. The complex was officially inaugurated in 2002. At the time of its construction, the reading room was the largest in the world. The library offers shelf space for eight million books, containing books in the Egyptian, classical Arabic, English, and French languages. In 2009, the library received a donation of 500,000 books from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) making the Bibliotheca Alexandrina the sixth-largest Francophone library in the world. The complex also houses a conference center, several specialized libraries, multiple museums and art galleries, a planetarium, and a manuscript restoration laboratory. The idea of reviving the Library of Alexandria dates back to 1974, when a committee set up by Alexandria University selected a plot of land for its new library between the campus and the seafront, close to where the ancient library once stood. One leading supporter of the project was former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, along with a partnership with UNESCO. UNESCO organized an architectural design competition in 1988 to choose the design. The competition was won by Snøhetta, a Norwegian architectural office, among 524 other entries. UNESCO also created an International Commission for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. The first pledges were made for funding the project at a conference held in 1990 in Aswan along the upper Nile River with US$65 million, mostly from the MENA states. Construction work began in 1995, and, after some additional US$220 million had been spent, the complex was officially inaugurated on 16 October 2002. The Internet Archive donated US$5 million to the BA, including 10 billion web pages from over 16 million sites, 2000 hours of Egyptian and U.S. television broadcasts, 1000 archival films, 100 terabytes of data stored on 200 computers, and a bookscanning facility for local books. The library also received a supplementary donation of 500,000 books from the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. The library has shelf space for eight million books, with the main reading room covering 20,000 square metres (220,000 sq ft) on eleven cascading levels. At the time of construction, the reading room was the largest in the world. The complex also houses a conference center; specialized libraries for maps, multimedia, for serving the blind and visually impaired, young people, and children; four museums; four art galleries for temporary exhibitions; 15 permanent exhibitions; a planetarium; and a manuscript restoration laboratory. The main reading room stands beneath a 32-meter-high glass-panelled roof, tilted out toward the sea like a sundial, and measuring some 160 m in diameter. The walls are of gray granite, carved with characters from 120 scripts. The characters carved into the granite wall were designed by Norwegian artist Jorunn Sannes, as part of the Snøhetta design team.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.