Sainte-Geneviève Library

The reading room of the Sainte-Geneviève Library is one long, airy hall carried on iron. A row of sixteen slender cast-iron Ionic columns runs down its middle, dividing it into twin aisles, and from them spring openwork iron arches that hold up two barrel vaults. Large windows along the walls fill the space with daylight. Completed in 1850 and opened in February 1851, it showed its iron structure openly instead of hiding it, and is regarded as a major step towards modern architecture.

The collection is far older than the building. It descends from the library of the Abbey of Saint Genevieve, founded on this hill in the early 6th century and recorded as holding books by 831. The abbey's books were reassembled after Viking raids, revived in the 17th century under Cardinal François de La Rochefoucauld, and survived the Revolution intact thanks largely to its director, the astronomer Alexandre Pingré. When it lost its old premises to the neighbouring Lycée Henri-IV in the 1840s, the state commissioned Henri Labrouste, a winner of the Prix de Rome, to design a new home on the site of the medieval Collège de Montaigu. The result was the first building in Paris designed from the start as a library. Its restrained facade, exactly as long as the reading room behind it, is decorated chiefly with a long list of carved names of famous scholars.

Inside, a vestibule painted with gardens and trees and lined with busts of French scientists leads to a grand staircase and up into the reading room. The library also keeps objects from the abbey's old cabinet of curiosities, including an astronomical clock acquired around 1695 and celestial and terrestrial globes. Labrouste's design later inspired the Boston Public Library by Charles Follen McKim, and the building was classified as a historic monument in 1992. Today it serves the universities of Paris, holding about two million documents.

The library stands on the Place du Panthéon in the Latin Quarter, in the 5th arrondissement, directly across the square from the Panthéon, which was built on the site of the old abbey church.

Getting there

The library is in central Paris, on the Place du Panthéon. The nearest airport is Paris-Orly (ORY), about 13 km away; Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG) is about 23 km away.