Bibliotheca Alexandrina
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An interior view. |
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An exterior view of the library. |
The
Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a major
library and
cultural center located on the shore of the
Mediterranean Sea in the
Egyptian
city of
Alexandria. It is both a commemoration of the
Library of Alexandria that was lost in
antiquity and an attempt to rekindle something of the brilliance that this earlier center of study and erudition represented.
The idea of reviving the old library dates back to
1974, when a committee set up by the
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. The notion of recreating the ancient library was soon enthusiastically adopted by other individuals and agencies. One leading supporter of the project was current Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak;
UNESCO was also quick to embrace the idea of endowing the Mediterranean region with a center of cultural and
scientific excellence. An
architectural competition, organized by UNESCO in
1988 to choose a design worthy of the site and its heritage, was won by
Snøhetta, a
Norwegian architectural office, from among more than 1,400 entries. At a conference held in
1990 in
Aswan, the first pledges of funding for the project were made:
USD $65 million, mostly from the
Arab states. Construction work began in
1995 and, after some USD $220 million had been spent, the complex was officially inaugurated on
October 16,
2002.
The dimensions of the project are vast: the library has shelf space for eight million books, with the main reading room covering 70,000 m² on eleven cascading levels. The complex also houses a conference center; specialized libraries for the blind, for young people, and for children; three
museums; four
art galleries; a
planetarium; and a
manuscript restoration
laboratory.
The library's architecture is equally striking. 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 Aswan
granite, carved with
characters from 120 different
human scripts.
Bibliotheca Alexandrina also maintains a copy of the
Internet Archive.
*
Bibliotheca Alexandrina official website*
Bibliotheca Alexandrina webarchive*
Portfolio of photographs of the complex
