Bibliotheca Alexandrina
major library and cultural center in Alexandria, Egypt
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Latin, 'Library of Alexandria'; Egyptian Arabic: مكتبة الإسكندريه, romanized: Maktabat al-’Iskandariyya, Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [mækˈtæb(e)t eskendeˈɾejjæ]) (BA) is a major library and cultural center on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in Alexandria, Egypt. It is a commemoration of the Library of Alexandria, once one of the largest libraries worldwide, which was lost in antiquity.
The complex was officially inaugurated in 2002. At the time of its construction, the reading room was the largest in the world.
The library offers shelf space for eight million books, containing books in the Egyptian, classical Arabic, English, and French languages. In 2009, the library received a donation of 500,000 books from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) making the Bibliotheca Alexandrina the sixth-largest Francophone library in the world.
The complex also houses a conference center, several specialized libraries, multiple museums and art galleries, a planetarium, and a manuscript restoration laboratory.
History
The idea of reviving the Library of Alexandria dates back to 1974, when a committee set up by Alexandria University selected a plot of land for its new library between the campus and the seafront, close to where the ancient library once stood. One leading supporter of the project was former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, along with a partnership with UNESCO.
UNESCO organized an architectural design competition in 1988 to choose the design. The competition was won by Snøhetta, a Norwegian architectural office, among 524 other entries.
“Bibliotheca Alexandrina” enters the record as major library and cultural center in Alexandria, Egypt. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bibliotheca, Alexandrina and major can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q501851. VIAF identifies the subject as 172389567. The Library of Congress control number is n88099980. Authority coordinates are 31.209, 29.909. 3 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2002, 2009, 1974 and 1988.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bibliotheca Alexandrina” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.