Unspecified/General

The historic cradle of the Bibliotheque nationale de France, the Richelieu site near the Palais Royal housed the national collections for centuries and reopened in 2022 after a long and careful restoration that transformed it into a cultural destination in its own right. Books have been kept on this site since the seventeenth century, and the buildings grew piecemeal over generations, their crowning glory the great oval reading room and the celebrated Salle Labrouste, an iron-and-glass space of the 1860s whose slender columns and domed ceilings made it a landmark of nineteenth-century architecture. The recent renovation opened much of the complex to the public for the first time, adding a museum of the BnF that displays a dazzling selection of treasures from its specialist collections, including ancient coins and medals, antiquities, manuscripts, engravings, photographs and objects such as Charlemagne's chess pieces and royal cameos. The restored Salle Labrouste now serves the institute of art history, while the public can admire it from the threshold, and a new garden and passage allow visitors to walk through the once-closed site. Richelieu remains a working research library for the departments of manuscripts, maps, prints, music and the performing arts, so scholars and curious visitors share the same dignified spaces. Centrally placed between the Palais Royal and the Bourse, easily reached on foot or by Metro, it sits at the heart of historic Paris. People come for the beauty of the reading rooms, for the richness and variety of the museum's treasures, and for the sense of stepping into the long history of knowledge and collecting. After its renewal it offers one of the most rewarding and least crowded cultural visits in the city. The museum and the public spaces can be visited with a ticket, while the working reading rooms remain reserved for accredited researchers, so most visitors come for the museum, the architecture and the temporary exhibitions. Quieter than the city's headline attractions, it rewards an unhurried look, and the chance to glimpse the magnificent Salle Labrouste is reason enough for lovers of architecture to seek the site out.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: 5 Rue Vivienne, Paris, France

Website: https://www.bnf.fr