The Bibliotheca Alexandrina: a reading room beneath a tilted disc

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina was officially inaugurated on 16 October 2002 on the Alexandria waterfront. It was conceived to recapture the spirit of the ancient Library of Alexandria, and, according to the library, its plaza stands where the old library and the royal palace of the Ptolemies once stood. The library’s own history dates the start of the ancient Mouseion, part academy, part research centre and part library, to 288 BCE under Ptolemy I.

The building

The building’s dominant image is a slanted disc, and its curved outer wall is covered in grey granite that displays letters from the alphabets of some 120 languages. It was designed by the Snøhetta Hamza Consortium of Norwegian and Egyptian architects.

The reading hall

Inside, the main reading area cascades down seven levels beneath the sloping roof and accommodates 2,000 readers. The library was designed to house up to eight million volumes, with 500,000 on open shelves in the main hall and 7.5 million in storage within the building.

Beyond the books, the complex includes a planetarium, three museums covering antiquities, manuscripts and the history of science, and several specialised libraries, among them libraries for children, for the visually impaired and for rare books.

Alexandria itself was founded in 331 BCE, when Alexander the Great chose the site for a new capital, and its lighthouse, the Pharos, was counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.