Now, when it was explained that one of our outings while in Austria would be to the Austrian National Library, I didn’t really get why would we would be going there. Surely, I’ve seen libraries before! We were then told that this is one of the libraries that Beauty and the Beast was inspired by, I was a little more interested, but still thought it would be like a normal, functioning library. It turns out, the Austrian National Library is more like a museum that is within a library, and it’s absolutely packed with people.
The Austrian National Library is a massive library with beautiful, high shelves of books, massive ladders set up leading to them, and lots of statues. When we visited, we primarily spent time in The State Hall, which was built in the 18th century as a part of the former Court Library. It’s a massive, long hall with different sections dedicated to different books. Some of the displays along the hall are specific to the books behind it, showcasing some of the scientific books or some the music books that are in this collection. One of the exhibitions even had earphones where you could listen to the music that was written in one of the books, which was lovely.
The inside of the Austrian National Library was absolutely stunning, with a lot of people stopping to take pictures with the beautiful backgrounds. The ceiling of the library was so fantastic too – I am so glad we got to see that in real life as the pictures don’t do it justice. Dotted around the hall there are also a bunch of different statues of people, which are interesting to see, and four different, massive, globes at each of the sides of the hall itself.
They have over 200,000 historical books, which you can see from the sides, but there are barriers so you aren’t able to go directly over to them and move them around or anything like that. Many of the books look very old, with big spines! The Austrian National Library does feel like such a fantastic, well-designed museum that might be a bit of an Instagram location, but there is a lot of actual history there beyond the beauty of the location itself.