Famous Reading Rooms Worth the Trip

Some reading rooms are destinations in themselves. The Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library runs 297 feet beneath celestial ceiling murals. Bates Hall at the Boston Public Library lines a full city block with green lamps and barrel vaults.

The iron arched reading room of Sainte-Genevieve in Paris, designed by Henri Labrouste in 1851, changed library architecture forever. The Long Room at Trinity College Dublin vaults 65 meters of oak above 200,000 old books. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina steps down like an amphitheater toward the Mediterranean.

Good architecture, it turns out, keeps people reading..