Bibliothèque nationale, Richelieu: The Oval Room
Why is it significant?
Go through the gateway on the Rue Vivienne into the courtyard, and you are inside the historic heart of the French national library. Plain stone walls on the outside... and inside, two of the most beautiful rooms ever built for reading.
Key Facts
| Place | Bibliothèque nationale, Richelieu: The Oval Room |
|---|---|
| Address | 5 Rue Vivienne, 75002 Paris, France |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.86820, 2.33900 |
| Part of Walk | Glass Roofs and Royal Secrets: From the Louvre to the Covered Passages of Paris |
| Generated | Generated |
Go through the gateway on the Rue Vivienne into the courtyard, and you are inside the historic heart of the French national library. Plain stone walls on the outside... and inside, two of the most beautiful rooms ever built for reading.
This block began as the palace of Cardinal Mazarin in the 1640s, the Italian minister who ruled France while Louis the Fourteenth was a child. In the eighteenth century the royal library moved in, and it never left. Over three centuries it swallowed the neighbouring mansions until it filled the whole block between four streets.
The first marvel is the Salle Labrouste, opened in 1868. Henri Labrouste dared to use cast iron in a noble building: sixteen columns as slender as reeds hold up nine domes of white faience, each with a round opening to let in the daylight. Readers bent over their desks under a ceiling that looks weightless. Labrouste had already tried the idea at the Sainte-Geneviève library, and here he perfected it: a room that feels like a garden of iron trees, painted with real foliage high on the walls.
The second is the Oval Room, begun in 1897 and only completed in 1932. Imagine an immense oval under a glass roof, ringed by tiers of books, with long tables and green lamps. Since the library's renovation was completed in 2022, anyone can walk in and sit there for free, among students and old men reading newspapers.
Most of the books moved to a new library in the east of the city in the 1990s, but the treasures stayed: manuscripts, maps, prints, ancient coins and medals. Among them is a bronze throne said to have belonged to King Dagobert in the seventh century, though its true age is still debated. When you come out, follow the Rue Vivienne north to the Grands Boulevards, and look for the entrance of the oldest passage of all.