Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, the national library of the Vatican

23 July 2014 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions, Opera Houses, Theaters, Libraries Reading Time:  6 minutes

Vatican Library entrance © Benoit Lhoest/cc-by-sa-3.0

Vatican Library entrance © Benoit Lhoest/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Vatican Apostolic Library (Latin: Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana), more commonly called simply the Vatican Library, is the library of the Holy See, currently located in Vatican City. It is one of the oldest libraries in the world and contains one of the most significant collections of historical texts. Formally established in 1475, though in fact much older, it has 75,000 codices from throughout history. On 20 March 2014, the Holy See announced that NTT Data Corporation and the Library concluded an agreement to digitize approximately 3,000 of the Library’s manuscripts within four years. It noted that there is the possibility of subsequently digitizing another 79,000 of the Library’s holdings. These will be high-definition images available on the Library’s Internet site.   read more…

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