Some of the world’s most stunning old structures were built to house books with a reverence equal to that of cathedrals, every grand hall, domed ceiling and hand-carved scroll a testament to the importance of the tomes. All over the world, ornate libraries act as veritable temples of knowledge, their very proportions inspiring feelings of awe from the moment you step through the door.

Photographer Massimo Listri spent 30 years traveling to many of these institutions, from Brazil’s gilded Real Gabinete Portuguese de Leitura to the pale marble of Portugal’s Biblioteca do Convento de Mafra. The result is a book that’s certainly worthy of inclusion in all of those collections.

Published by Taschen, ‘The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries’ is an oversized, full-color documentation of libraries ranging from medieval masterpieces to extravagant 19th century structures, classical to rococo, modestly to majestically sized. Few people have seen quite as many of these places in person as Listri, who has captured them in all the detail they deserve.

Featured libraries include the Morgan Library in New York, the papal collections of the Vatican Apostolic Library, Trinity College Library and the Michelangelo-designed Laurentian Library in Florence, once the private library of the powerful Medici family. At 560 pages, the book may offer one of the most comprehensive ways to tour these structures short of reproducing Listri’s travels (and gaining access to libraries that are closed to the public) yourself. In addition to the photographer’s images, the book includes descriptions of each library’s history.

Of course, modern libraries can be monumentally beautiful as well – check out 14 examples like the Jose Vasconcelos Library in Mexico City, Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and the Tama Art University Library in Tokyo.

Bibliophiles can browse books inside a 19th-century theater filled with frescoes, a converted cathedral, a subterranean space with sci-fi vibes or an incredibly ornate space that helped inspire Hogwarts. From Los Angeles to Beijing, Buenos Aires to Romania, these 13 bookstores are among the world’s most beautiful and unique.

Converted Church: Selexyz Dominicanen, Maastricht, The Netherlands

A dream bookstore in every respect, this location of the Selexyz chain in Maastricht occupies a 13th century Dominican church, inserting modern elements as a building-within-a-building to preserve the historic architecture. A cafe can be found within the area formerly occupied by the choir.

Livraria Lello, Porto, Portugal

Said to be among JK Rowling’s inspirations for Hogwarts, Portugal’s Livraria Lello features an incredible red staircase snaking through four stories of floor-to-ceiling stacked books in dark-stained cases. Ornate painted plaster ceilings, a stained glass skylight and bas-relief sculptures of Portuguese literary figures adorn the inspirational space.

Fang Suo Commune, Chengdu, China

Chinese book retailer Fang Suo Commune opened an incredible underground store in Chengdu with over 320 continuous feet of bookshelves lining the two long sides of the space. Measuring over 40,000 square feet of a subterranean mixed-use complex next to the ancient dace temple, the bookstore features 37 massive columns supporting a concrete canopy.

El Ateneo Grand Splendid Bookstore, Buenos Aires

What was once the Teatro Gran Splendid, which opened in 1919, is now one of the world’s most stunning bookstores. The El Ateneo in Buenos Aires, Argentina once had a capacity for 1050 audience members, but now houses hundreds of thousands of books. Original details like the crimson stage curtains, ornate carvings and ceiling frescoes remain.

Cook & Book, Brussels

Hungry bookworms in Brussels make their way to the Cook & Book, a combination bookstore and restaurant with a series of themed rooms divided by subject. There’s a modern train making loops around the kids’ area, an Airstream caravan in the travel section and British flags waving around the English Literature room. The cook book department even has your choices laid out on a salad bar, along with a host of edible treats.

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Bibliophiles Dream 13 Of The Worlds Most Beautiful Bookstores

Matte black steel and timber-clad stacked volumes fill in empty spaces throughout the medieval Torre del Borgo in northern Italy, a recent renovation stabilizing the crumbling stone walls and connecting the four stories together for transformation into a public library. Still strong after all these centuries, the stone shell of the fortified building works in concert with modern materials to create a space that provides an important function to the community, and helps preserve its history.

Before it was re-designed, the Torre was not only falling apart piece by piece, it lacked adequate means of passage from one floor to the next, and the interiors were unfinished. It needed structural support, extra space and additional windows to make it usable for the city of Bergamo.

Architect Gianluca Gemini came up with “an architectonic and functional reinterpretation of the building” that identifies solutions to the degradation. Black iron ramps and walkways cut across the four main halls, making them fully accessible and highlighting a contrast between the smooth steel and glass and the rough, mottled stone. This solution is visually striking, invisible from outside and leaves plenty of room for library patrons to read and browse.

The timber and concrete addition features floor-to-ceiling glazing to bring more natural light to the interior, and adds floor space, without significantly altering the original stone structure.

A beautiful old chapel in the Italian town of Lonate Ceppino has been transformed into a modern library with a  perforated aluminum tower that adds to the building without compromising its historic character. Italian architects DAP studio restored the traditional architectural features of the Oratory of San Michele before converting it for a new use with the sleek white extension.

The new two-story volume stands off to one side of the original structure, connected via stairways. The top part tapers inward to allow for the preservation of the chapel’s overhang. The new volume contains bathrooms, archives and technical systems, while the bright open spaces of the church hold the books.

Where one building is solid and opaque, the other is translucent, shimmering in the sunlight. The small volume connecting the chapel and the extension features a glazed roof to let in more sunlight without substantially altering the architecture of the historic structure.

This library is hardly alone in making creative use of old churches, monasteries and temples. Check out the incredibly grand ‘Waanders In de Broeren’ 15th-century Dominican church-turned-library, and many other religious-to-secular conversions.

Dark wood, dazzling details, leaded glass windows and tier after towering tier of books – classic historic libraries are a bibliophile’s dream. These 13 (more) libraries, dating from the 18th to the early 20th centuries, represent some of the most astonishingly beautiful book repositories ever built.

Rijksmuseum Reading Room, Amsterdam

(images via: rijksmuseum.nl)

The largest public art history research library in the Netherlands, the Rijksmuseum Reading Room was formerly located in the stunning main Rijksmuseum building, established in 1800. It has since been mod to a new, separate building, but images of its tiers of books in a massive historic room continue to dazzle.

Trinity College Library, Dublin, Ireland

(images via: irish welcome tours)

At Ireland’s oldest university, home to the book of Kells, the ‘Old Library’ stuns with its dark wood, spiral staircases and seemingly endless aisles of books. It was built between 1712 and 1732 and renovated in 1860 to include a barrel ceiling for a second floor of book shelves.

Canadian Library of Parliament

(images via: wikimedia commons)

Canada’s LIbrary of Parliament was originally built in 1876 and is the only part of the Centre Block to remain untouched after a fire in 1916. Inspired by the British Museum Reading Room, this library features a massive main chamber with a vaulted ceiling. The walls and bookshelves are lined with intricately carved white pine paneling.

Strahov Monastery Library, Prague

(images via: claudia dias, architecture.artyx.ru)

Part of a monastery that was established in the year 1143, the Strahov Monastery Library has a 46-foot ceiling decorated with a 1794 fresco entitled ‘The Struggle of Mankind to Know Real Wisdom’. It contains a vast collection of books as well as ancient printing presses.

Suzzallo Library at the University of Washington

(images via: railgun)

Completed in 1926 in Collegiate Gothic style, the University of Washington’s Suzzallo LIbrary contains an incredible 250-foot long, 52-foot wide Graduate Reading Room featuring a timber-vaulted ceiling, leaded windows and cast-stone ashlar wall blocks.

Admont Abbey Library, Austria

(images via: wikimedia commons)

The largest monastic library in the world is located in Admont in Austria. Admont Abbey was founded in 1074 and settled by Benedictine monks, and the spectacular gold and white library was added in 1776. It survived a disastrous 1865 fire that destroyed the rest of the monastery.

Real Gabinete Portugues de Leitura, Rio de Janeiro

(images via: rbpdesigner, servuloh)

This dark and somber reading room contains an amazing 350,000 books. The Real Gabinete Português de Leitura was built in the Manueline Portuguese style in 1837 and is four stories tall inside for maximum book storage without a cluttered, maze-like floor.

Iowa State Capitol Law Library

(images via: rata  bibliotecaria, state library of iowa)

A lacy white banister flows along tier after tier of books and down a beautiful spiral staircase at the Iowa State Capitol Law Library, located in the Capitol building. The library provides Iowa lawmakers, lawyers, government employees and the public with a specialized legal collection of treatises and law books.

Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto

(images via: the great geek manual, torontoist)

The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library is located at the University of Toronto, and is the largest publicly accessible collection of rare books and manuscripts in Canada. It contains Darwin’s proof copy of On the Origin of the Species among other notable works.

George Peabody Library, Baltimore

(images via: elibris.jhu.edu)

One of the most beautiful libraries in America is located in Baltimore. The George Peabody LIbrary opened in 1878 and contains five tiers of ornamental cast-iron balconies rising to the skylight 61 feet above the floor. It contains 300,000 titles, most dating from the 18th to early 20th centuries.

Reading Room at the British Museum

(images via: tony harrison, pragmatopian)

At the heart of the British Museum is the Reading Room, completed in 1857 and restored in 2000. Considered a masterpiece of mid-19th century technology when it was built, the reading room was inspired by the domed Pantheon in Rome and measures 140 feet in diameter. The original gold, blue and cream color scheme was reinstated during the restoration.

Abbey Library of St. Gallen, Switzerland

(images via: chippee)

The library at the Abbey St. Gall in Switzerland is the country’s oldest, and considered one of the most important monastic libraries in the world. Its 2,100 manuscripts date back to the 8th through 15th centuries, and it also contains 160,000 books. The library, along with the rest of the abbey, is now a World Heritage Site as an ideal example of a Carolingian monastery.

Stockholm Public Library

(images via: marcus hansson, smath)

Stockholm’s rotunda library building, designed by architect Gunnar Asplund, was completed in 1932 and is still considered one of the city’s most important buildings. It is primarily comprised of a round lending hall in a tall cylindrical shape and also contains interior reading rooms. Polished black stucco gives the entrance a dramatic flair, and the hanging chandelier captures lights from the high clerestory windows.

Handlingenkamer, Netherlands

(images via: tweedekamer.nl)

The Old Library at the Dutch House of Representatives contains volume after volume of verbatim reports of parliament proceedings and debates. The roof was constructed as a leaded glass dome to allow daylight to filter down the four stories to the floor, which was necessary at the time it was built in the 19th century to avoid bringing combustibles like candles and gas lamps from setting the 100,000 volumes on fire.