Dublin Day 2: Two Old Libraries (and the Book of Kells)

Six weeks after we left for Dublin, I am finally getting around to a hasty report on the rest of our trip. Here is a link to day 1. On Friday, day 2, we did what we came for ...

... with at least one attentive person in the audience:

After rich conversation over lunch in the TCD Dining Hall--and, for one of our company, a humongous slice of rich chocolate cake--we made our way to the Book of Kells exhibit and Trinity College Dublin's Old Library. Pictures are not permitted in the Book of Kells exhibit, so you will have to take my word for it when I say the open pages on display from the Book of Kells were beautiful, and seeing them in person was neat. (You can view high quality digital images from the Book of Kells here.) Because the actual Book of Kells and other medieval Latin Bibles are housed in a highly-secure vault, most of the exhibit consisted of enormous reproductions. Very nice, but we didn't linger.

Even more awe-inspiring, for us libraryphiles, was the Long Room of Trinity College Dublin's Old Library, which is routinely included in lists of the world's most beautiful libraries. Since I didn't bring my camera, I will point you to professional photographs online here, but these pictures, taken with our cell phone camera prove that we were actually there:

A Latin Bible in the Old Library with an illustration from the book of Tobit:

The Trinity College Library was founded with the university in 1592, but the building itself was constructed between 1712-1732, which makes it only the second-oldest library building in Dublin.  

So we hiked across town by way of Christ Church cathedral ...

and St. Patrick's Cathedral ...

to Marsh's Library, which opened its doors in 1707:

One of the attractions of the library is that it looks very much like it did in the early 18th century. Here's how the library website puts it:

"Designed by Sir William Robinson (d.1712) the Surveyor General of Ireland, it is one of the very few 18th century buildings left in Dublin that is still being used for its original purpose. Many of the collections in the Library are still kept on the shelves allocated to them by Marsh and by Elias Bouhéreau, the first librarian, when the Library was opened. ... The interior of the library with its beautiful dark oak bookcases has remained largely unchanged since it was built three hundred years ago. It is a magnificent example of a late Renaissance and early Enlightenment library."

We were told that Narcissus Marsh, the former provost of Trinity College Dublin, founded the library because he disliked having to supervise students at Trinity College who wanted to access its library holdings. Marsh's library was Europe's second "public" library, and Ireland's first. "Public", of course, meant gentlemen and scholars. Even then it was not a lending library. Because of problems with theft, readers were locked into gated cubicles, and had to ring a bell to be let out:

Now, happily, the library is open to women and children too.