Puebla’s Palafoxiana Library

Across the street from Puebla’s cathedral and located on the second floor of the Casa de Cultura, there is an amazing library called the Biblioteca Palafoxiana.

It currently houses a collection of over 45,000 books and manuscripts published between the 15th and 20th centuries. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful baroque library that feels very much like a time capsule right in the heart of Puebla.

It was the first library in the Americas to allow access to anyone who could read, not just clergy, fulfilling the Bishop's desire to make knowledge accessible.

The books, magazine and pamphlets are written in several languages, including Spanish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and indigenous languages like Náhuatl and Mixtec.

We were surprised to see the extent of what the books covered - everything worth studying at that time, including classical and indigenous languages, philosophy, theology, canon law, geography, astronomy, natural science, medicine, mathematics and physics.

We asked a guide to take us around to explain what we were seeing.

In 1981, the Library was declared a National Historic Landmark and earned recognition as a “Memory of the World” site from UNESCO in 2005.Read more