The Business Insider magazine has a great article by Asta Thrastardottir featuring eighteen of the loveliest and most spectacular library buildings  in the world. Definitely worth seeing if you are visiting these parts of the world. To see them all

They say “from a library hidden in the forests of Beijing to one in Egypt that was designed like a sundial, these are the libraries that all book lovers should visit in their lifetime”.

Here’s just a couple of contrasting styles.

Number 1 is  The Admont Library in Admont, Austria. Located in the foothills of the Alps, this beautiful library is the second largest monastery library in the world. The library hall was designed in the late Baroque style by the architect Joseph Hueber in 1776 with a nearly 230-foot-long hall that contains 200,000 volumes. The ceilings were painted by Bartolomeo Altomonte and show the stages of human knowledge, up to the high point of Divine Revelation.

Number 14 is the Sir Duncan Rice Library in Aberdeen.

It’s the new library of the University of Aberdeen and incorporates 21st-century design, and has a huge spiraling atrium in its centre. The library gained a lot of attention for the range of sustainable features included in its design. The spiraling atrium lights up all eight floors — the building also has photovoltaic cells on its roof to convert the energy of light directly into electricity.