The Bavarian state library is just next to the Ludwig Maximilians Universität, and is this huge piece of a building which it is very hard to get a good perspective from the street. No picture I took could really capture it’s extreme, stylish squareness.
I also realised that it mainly serves as a research library, with a archive-like interior and students sitting everywhere, studying, despite it being Friday evening already. No children’s books to check. But the entrance hall was pretty.
And as if by chance, I happened to see a sign in German next to a picture of a really old book. The only thing I understood of the sign was that there was an exhibition and that it was free. So I though, why not. I climbed some really narrow stairs and ended up in one of the library wings, where a small dark room was filled with 500 year old books from the Bavarian royal collection. Incredibly beautiful books, like pieces of art, with illustrations and yellow KRUSIGT paper. There was a sign forbidding cameras, but there was no one else there and my smartphone can’t really be called a camera, now, can it? It doesn’t even have a flash.
A book of medicine, prabably made in Naples in 950.
Some kind of book about Christianity from 1541 (my German has never been particularly strong).
A lovely little exhibition. I wish they still made books like these. Then I would certainly buy them, instead of always borrowing them from the library like now.
Katja Malmborg 