Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar

29 March 2017 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Opera Houses, Theaters, Libraries, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  9 minutes

© Rudolf Klein/cc-by-sa-3.0-de

© Rudolf Klein/cc-by-sa-3.0-de

The Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar houses a major collection of German literature and historical documents. The library contains 1,000,000 books, 2,000 medieval and early modern manuscripts, 600 ancestral registers, 10,000 maps, and 4,000 musical scripts. The research library today has approximately 850,000 volumes with collection emphasis on the German literature. Among its special collections is an important Shakespeare collection of approximately 10,000 volumes, as well as a 16th-century Bible connected to Martin Luther. Today, the library is a public research library for literature and art history. One of the library’s most famous patrons was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who worked there from 1797 to 1832. The library also includes the world’s largest Faust collection. The Duchess’s significant 13,000-volume music collection is also available in the library.   read more…

Casa di Goethe in Rome

3 March 2017 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions, Opera Houses, Theaters, Libraries, Universities, Colleges, Academies Reading Time:  5 minutes

Goethe in the Roman Campagna by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein © Tom86/cc-by-sa-4.0

Goethe in the Roman Campagna by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein © Tom86/cc-by-sa-4.0

The Casa di Goethe is a museum in Rome, in Via del Corso 18, dedicated to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, his Italian Journey and his life at Rome in the years from 1786 tthrough 1788. During his journey Goethe wrote a journal and also many letters which would be published in 1816-17 as the Italian Journey.   read more…

Bibliotheca Alexandrina

5 August 2016 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions, Opera Houses, Theaters, Libraries, UNESCO World Heritage, Union for the Mediterranean Reading Time:  19 minutes

© flickr.com - Argenberg/cc-by-2.0

© flickr.com – Argenberg/cc-by-2.0

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 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 adopted by other individuals and agencies. One leading supporter of the project was former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak; UNESCO was also quick to embrace the concept of endowing the Mediterranean region with a center of cultural and scientific excellence. An architectural design competition was organized by UNESCO in 1988 to choose a design worthy of the site and its heritage. The competition was won by Snøhetta, a Norwegian architectural office, from among more than 1,400 entries. The first pledges were made for funding the project at a conference held in 1990 in Aswan: 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 16 October 2002. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is trilingual, containing books in Arabic, English, and French. In 2010, the library received a donation of 500,000 books from the National Library of France, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). The gift makes the Bibliotheca Alexandrina the sixth-largest Francophone library in the world. The BA also is now the largest depository of French books in the Arab world, surpassing those of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, in addition to being the main French library in Africa.   read more…

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