Day 9: Coimbra University

We had a quick tour of the university at Coimbra. The Biblioteca Joanina at the University of Coimbra is an 18th-century Baroque masterpiece built under King John V. Inside, three grand rooms feature gold-leaf wood carvings, detailed lacquerwork, and painted ceilings with optical illusions.
Exotic Brazilian rosewood shelves hold over 60,000 historic books. To protect these rare pages, the library relies on a natural conservation trick: two-meter-thick stone walls keep temperatures steady, while a resident colony of bats flies through the dark every night to eat book-destroying insects. Directly below the glittering library sits a stone medieval prison where misbehaving students were once locked up under the university's private law.
No photos are allowed and I followed the rules but found plenty of images on the interweb.

Here’s a link to someone else’s rule breaking video:

https://youtu.be/G3wDe5jZdwA?si=j-UcH4TT0y0vkyy3Read more