I will travel the world for a library. And it’s not because I’m entrenched in any scholarly research—I’m not an academic. I’m a nerd. I love books, I love architecture, I love a good backstory, and libraries have all three. They are some of the most interesting and beautiful buildings we humans create. They’re also filled with beautiful things we’ve thought up and created. And on top of that, they are lenses into a community. They hold events and lectures, host neighborhood groups, show movies, throw parties. I’ve been to one in Manchester, England, that has a vinyl listening club. One in Halifax that has a recording studio and instrument lending program. One in Beacon, New York, that has a “library of things” from which you can check out gardening tools and GoPro cameras. I took an interesting tour of one in Nairobi that was originally built by white colonizers for white people only but is now being reclaimed and rejuvenated by a nonprofit organization representing the community that actually lives there. What happens in a library says a lot about the people and place you’re visiting.
So whether you wax poetic about a public library like I do, want to see stunning architecture and living history, or just need a quiet place (usually with free Wi-Fi) to rest in the middle of a long day of walking around a city, start putting libraries on your Google Maps lists. Here are some of the most beautiful around the world, according to our staff.
Calgary Central Library
Location: Calgary, Canada
The Calgary Central Library just might be my favorite building in all of Canada. Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta designed the building to look like the Chinook cloud arches that form out in this part of the Canadian prairie. The interior is a swirl of western red cedar slats, spiraling up toward an enormous skylight, with a geometric facade that looks like snowflakes. You’ll often see kids oohing and aahing over the Bookscalator, a conveyor belt that carries returned reading materials off to be sorted, and there’s a Short Story Dispenser that prints out stories like pharmacy receipts—just choose if you want to read for one, three, or five minutes. Up on the fourth floor, you’ll find perhaps the coolest feature I’ve ever seen in a library: an Elders’ Guidance Circle, where Indigenous Canadians from the area can meet with elders or knowledge keepers to chat about culture, interact with traditional items, or learn languages from the Treaty 7 (Southern Alberta) area. —Nicholas DeRenzo
Bogotá's Virgilio Barco Library has a moat, one of many ways architect Rogelio Salmona integrated the building into the landscape.
Photo by Oscar Garces/Shutterstock
Biblioteca Virgilio Barco
Location: Bogotá, Colombia
Biblioteca Virgilio Barco, inaugurated in 2001, is a dazzling public space in Bogotá. The building is located in the heart of the Colombian capital, right next to the city’s largest public park, the stunning, populist Parque Simón Bolívar. Every aspect of Biblioteca Virgilio Barco, including the furniture, was designed by the naturalist architect Rogelio Salmona. Up to 65,000 visitors descend and ascend the library’s sun-brushed interior of tiered semi-circles each month. Outside, the building toggles between brick and concrete, its edges glancing past stepped pools and a garden terrace for reading alfresco. Views on one rounded side look to the city’s iconic cerros orientales (Eastern hills). The biblioteca feels both intimate and expansive, like the act of reading itself. —Scott Hocker
Helsinki opened Oodi, a 185,677-square-foot public library, in the city center in 2018.
Photo by watermelontart / Shutterstock
Helsinki Central Library Oodi
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Famed for being happy, outdoorsy coffee lovers, Finns are also readers, with a 100 percent literacy rate. Naturally, central Helsinki has a knockout library, Oodi (Finnish for “ode”). With living trees inside. Plus a designated “nerd loft.” Opened in 2018, the curvy glass, steel, and wood building is energy efficient. The ground floor has event venues, Kino Regina for nearly daily movies new and old, and a café; the second floor offers soundproof music studios, game rooms, and workstations/machines for electronics (with soldering irons and tin), laser cutting, printing, and sewing. Floor-to-ceiling window walls light up the third floor, aka Book Heaven; it also has outdoor seating. And it’s where you’ll find nine indoor trees. —Pat Tompkins
The Manchester Central Library opened 1934 and was designed by E. Vincent Harris, who had a thing for Roman architecture—which is why his creation recalls the Parthenon in Rome.
Photo by Bardhok Ndoji/Shutterstock
Manchester Central Library
Location: Manchester, England
Manchester is more popularly known for its musical history (New Order, Stone Roses, Oasis), but it’s been university city for centuries, and as a result is full of beautiful, significant libraries. The oldest surviving public library in the English-speaking world is here: It’s called Chetham’s, it was founded in 1653, it’s located in a former monastery that dates back to 1421, and it’s open for tours. The neo-Gothic John Rylands Library looks like something out of Harry Potter (and it was founded by a woman in 1900—how boss is that?). Stop by for rotating exhibits and to wander through its cathedral-like rooms. But in terms of a regular, check-books-out type of public library, the main Manchester Central Library is the site to be seen. It opened in 1930 and was modeled after the Pantheon. It’s not stuck in the past though: Music, art, and literature events are scheduled regularly; and I passed a foosball table on one floor and a sign for a vinyl listening club on another. —Billie Cohen
In architect Santiago Calatrava’s law library at the University of Zurich, a glass elevator gives visitors views of the oval shape he created.
Photo by Forgemind ArchiMedia
Zurich Law Library
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
From the outside, the law library at the University of Zurich doesn’t look like anything much: It’s a big rectangle of a building originally opened in 1909, and not much of that has changed. Once inside though, everything changes, thanks to Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, who redesigned it in 2004 (and whose name you might remember from such hits as New York City’s Oculus at the World Trade Center and the Milwaukee Art Museum’s soaring, ribbed addition). You walk into an atrium of oval space, and look up to six, stacked, seemingly floating oval levels of light wood and white walls, all capped by a glass oval skylight dome. On each level, guests can study at desks that wrap right around the atrium (and anyone can go in; you don’t have to be a student). But my tip here is to ride the glass elevator up and down a few times. It’s inside the center of the oval, so you’ll experience a cool, disorienting feeling as you rise over the open space and see the stripes of the floors pass by. —BC
The Rose Main Reading Room, in the main branch of the New York Public Library, is open for tours Monday–Saturday at 11:20 a.m., 1:30 p.m, and 3 p.m.
Photo by Clarence Holmes/© Clarence Holmes
New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Location: New York City
You’ve seen this library’s famous lion statues in dozens of movies over the years (The Wiz, Ghostbusters, Breakfast at Tiffany’s), and countless tourists line up to enter its grand halls. It’s beloved in summer for its sweeping front steps that serve as a community space, and in winter for its regal Christmas tree and the wreaths that adorn the necks of Patience and Fortitude (yes, the lions have names). But for locals, this 1911 Beaux-Arts manse—the main Fifth Avenue location of the extensive New York Public Library system—remains as welcoming and user-friendly as any neighborhood library. A dozen rooms, each more impressive than the next, are open for study, reading, research, computer work, you name it. And I’ve spent countless hours just typing on my laptop in many of them (though some are restricted for special academic use).
Throughout, marble staircases and hallways are accented with intricate ceiling panels and etched mottoes, and hallways lead to gems like the DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room, with wall murals of New York’s legendary newspaper buildings; and the map division room, stocked with historical maps of the world as well as the blocks of the city.
Most of the visiting crowd is drawn to the top-floor Rose Reading Room, a sprawling space that manages to have the airiness of an open courtyard and the cozy regality of a university at the same time. The room is as long as two city blocks and murals of rose-tinted clouds by James Wall Finn make the 52-foot-high ceilings look like windows to the kind of magical land you’d find only in books. The space feels sacred, and library users treat it that way. Camera-toting visitors are allowed in only one hour per day or via a few 15-minute (free) tours; the rest of the time, guests are limited to those who actually intend to sit or work quietly, but really anyone can bring a book or a laptop and spend time here. When you’re ready for a break, step into the “Treasures” exhibit to see the original Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animals, or join free tours of the exhibition or the building as a whole. —BC
