Touring the Great Monastery Libraries

The monastery libraries of Europe crown any book pilgrimage. Admont in Austria owns the largest monastic library hall in the world, 70 meters of rococo splendor completed in 1776.

Melk, perched above the Danube, keeps about 100,000 volumes beneath baroque frescoes and lent its name to the narrator of The Name of the Rose. Saint Gall in Switzerland preserves 2,100 medieval manuscripts and the only surviving architectural plan from the early Middle Ages, inside a UNESCO listed hall.

Strahov in Prague pairs a Theological Hall with a Philosophical Hall and a cabinet of curiosities. Mafra in Portugal shelters 36,000 leather bound volumes under a vaulted hall, patrolled at night by insect hunting bats..