Biblioteca Joanina

Walking to the top of the steep hill to the plateau where the University of Coimbra is located, was challenging. No wonder that all the students look so fit!

Our plan for the day was to spend a few hours in this university as it is one of the oldest universities in the world (established in 1290!) and a World Heritage site. It also has an amazing Baroque library.

We easily found the building where we could buy tickets to see the historic part of the university - a visit to the Royal Palace (Great Hall of Acts, Private Examination Room and Arms Room), the Chapel of St. Michael, the Baroque Library (Grand Room, Middle Floor and the Academic Prison) and the College of Jesus, which includes the Physics Laboratory (18th and 19th centuries) and the Natural History Collection (18th century). We started at the library.

Only 60 people maximum can enter the library at a time for only 20 minutes and times have to be booked. We reserved two spots for noon. When we got there, we were told that we could take photos, no flash, on the first two floors but no photos were allowed for the third and most amazing floor.

The front doorway of this elegant building has four columns, with the majestic royal coat of arms in Baroque style above it, but we didn’t enter through these doors. The Joanine Library was built on top of a medieval prison, which was later turned into an academic prison for misbehaving students. Today, we started the tour of the library in the basement area - in the prison.

In this three storey building, two of which are underground, the wall are covered in bookshelves with 300,000 old volumes about Medicine, Geography, History, Humanist Studies, Science, Civil and Canon Law, Philosophy and Theology works.

The books, published between the 15th and 19th centuries, are still in good condition thanks to the way the building was built. With outside walls 3 meters thick, a door made of teak wood and the interior covered with wood in order to absorb the excess of humidity, this space works as a true vault favouring book conservation. The shelves are made of oak that deters insects.

At the library, three rooms stand out. They are connected to each other by decorated arches and completely covered with book shelves topped by the royal coat of arms: in the first room, gold contrasts against a green background; in the second, the golden colour contrasts against a red background and, in the last, a black background makes golden details come to life. Their walls are covered with two-level bookshelves made in exotic, golden and multi-coloured wood, and the ceilings shows figures inspired by the arts and science.

At night, after the library is closed, a bat colony helps maintain the books by eating bugs. The tables are covered with leather at night in order to protect them from the bat poo.

In the library’s vault there are extremely rare volumes such as the first edition of “Os Lusíadas”, a Hebrew Bible, published in the second half of the 15th century and of which there are only about 20 copies around the world. There is even a 48-line Latin Bible, printed in 1462 by two Gutenberg partners and which is considered the most beautiful out of the four which were printed.Read more