The Most Fascinating Libraries of the World 08 - The Royal Portugese Reading Room in Brazil

I visited a friend's blog one day and I was literary blown over by a picture of one of the most fascinating libraries around - Trinity College Library in Dublin, Ireland. It also gave me an idea of a series of posts about the best, the most beautiful, the strangest and the biggest libraries there are. The libraries that can make you drool, where you would be able to spend an indefinite period of time without noticing, where you would like to live and die till the end of the world (if they only served coffee and cake that is). Perhaps you can't visit them all but what is the Internet for? I'll try to illustrate my posts as well as it is only possible, providing, I hope, a nice tour for every visitor around. Enjoy!

The Royal Portuguese Reading Room, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The Real Gabinete Português de Leitura in Rio de Janeiro holds more Portuguese works than anywhere outside of Portugal, including a number of rare titles. The building is adorned in the neomanuelino style based on the Gothic-renaissance style that was popular at the time of the Portuguese discovery of Brazil. Inside the library there is both a stunning chandelier and a gorgeous iron skylight that was the first of its kind in the country.

Images courtesy of Luciano Joaquim’s, Sebastian R.’s and Mathieu Struck’s Flickr streams.

Read the full text here: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/125697#ixzz2CHkYJdNC
--brought to you by mental_floss! 

Constructed between 1880 and 1887, it has more than 350,000 volumes in a library, fully computerized, which brings together rare books from the XVI, XVII and XVIII. The library receives a copy of Portugal for each of the works published in the country according to its status of “legal deposit”.

The facade, inspired by the Jeronimos Monastery in Lisbon, was carved in limestone in Lisbon and brought by ship to Rio. The statues and medallions sculptured in the entrance portray distinguished Portuguese, including Pedro Álvares Cabral, Luís de Camões and Vasco da Gama, as the eternal guardians of the human knowledge.

Gorgeous, isn't it?
By the way, if you want to admire other great libraries, presented by me in this series, search this blog using 'libraries of the world' tag and you'll find them all.