An eighty-metre baroque hall lined with leather-bound volumes and crowned by a frescoed dome, the State Hall of the Austrian National Library is one of the most beautiful library interiors in the world. Built between 1721 and 1723 to designs by the imperial architect Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and completed by his son, it forms part of the Hofburg complex in the centre of Vienna and was conceived as the grand court library of the Habsburgs. The hall rises some twenty metres to a ceiling covered in allegorical frescoes celebrating the emperor Charles the Sixth, whose statue stands at its heart. Around two hundred thousand historical books fill the shelves, among them the precious collection of Prince Eugene of Savoy, and four enormous Venetian globes more than a metre across punctuate the space. The Austrian National Library is the largest library in the country, holding more than twelve million items across its collections, archives and museums, and the State Hall, known in German as the Prunksaal, is its showpiece, open to visitors as a museum rather than a working reading room. Beyond the grandeur, the library preserves manuscripts, maps, papyri, globes and music, reflecting its centuries as the scholarly heart of the empire. Changing exhibitions on themes drawn from the collections are staged within the hall, giving a reason to return. Once the imperial court library, it changed its name to the national library in 1920 after the fall of the monarchy, but the baroque splendour of the State Hall still conjures the world of the Habsburg court. Its setting within the Hofburg places it alongside the imperial apartments, the treasury and the other museums of the palace, making it easy to fold into a wider visit to the seat of the former empire. The hall opens through the week with a midweek closed day, and tickets are sold on site or online, with a visit taking under an hour, after which the surrounding Josefsplatz and the streets of the old town invite further exploration. The library origins reach back to the imperial court collections of the Middle Ages, and successive Habsburgs enlarged it into one of the great repositories of Europe, a status it retains today across its specialist museums of papyri, globes, maps and music. For many visitors the State Hall alone justifies the trip, a single room that distils the learning, wealth and artistic confidence of the imperial age into one breathtaking, book-lined space.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Josefsplatz 1, Vienna, Austria

Telephone: +43 1 534 10

Website: https://www.onb.ac.at

Opening Date: 01/01/1723