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The tilted roof of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina with its skylights, beside the granite wall carved with signs, and palm trees along the sea front.

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Egypt · Alexandria

Bibliotheca Alexandrina

A library on the Mediterranean in Alexandria, opened in 2002 to recall the spirit of the ancient library, in a tilted granite-walled disc.

Culture and institutions

The tilted roof and carved granite wall of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources beyond UNESCO and Wikipedia: 4 (2 institutional, 2 primary). Check each source's status in the list at the end of the card. It was published without a prior review by people from the place. If something is wrong or missing, tell the project.

This card keeps two kinds of knowledge apart: what the documented record says, and what the people who know the place say. Each is labelled, so a reader always knows which one they are reading.

Jump to what people who know this place say

In the record

What it is

The New Library of Alexandria is dedicated, in its own words, to recapturing the spirit of openness and scholarship of the original Bibliotheca Alexandrina.[1] It officially opened in 2002.[2]

Kind
Library and cultural complex[3][4]
Opened
2002[2]
Architects
Snøhetta, winners of an international competition[4]
Building
160 m across, 32 m high, 12 m below ground[4]
Capacity
4 million volumes, expandable to 8 million[4]
Main reading room
20,000 m² for 2,000 readers[4]

The design

The architects say an international competition in 1988 drew 1,300 architects from 77 countries, with 524 entries reviewed, and was won by the young and unknown practice Snøhetta.[4]

The building is a tilted circular form, 160 metres in diameter, 32 metres high and extending 12 metres underground, with 80,000 square metres of floor.[4] Its granite wall of nearly 6,000 square metres carries around 4,000 unique characters from various alphabets, symbols, musical and mathematical notation, Braille and bar-codes.[4]

What is inside

The library can hold up to 4 million volumes, and 8 million with compact storage. The reading room spreads over 20,000 square metres and seats 2,000 readers.[4]

The library's own overview lists six specialised libraries, four museums (Antiquities, Manuscripts, Sadat and History of Science), a planetarium science centre, a children's ALEXploratorium, twelve academic research centres, an arts centre, sixteen permanent exhibitions and a conference centre.[3] It says the complex receives about 1.5 million visitors a year; the architects give one million.[3][4]

Not yet sourced
  • The numbers differ between sources: visitors per year, and the competition year (1988 on the architects' page; other accounts say 1989). The card gives what each source says.
  • How the library is used by people in Alexandria, and who comes: the sources read are the architects' and the library's own descriptions.
  • How many books it actually holds today. The sources give capacity, not the collection.
  • What the library's relationship is to the ancient library beyond its own statement of intent; no history of the ancient library is told here.
  • The coordinates are Wikipedia's for the complex, not an entrance.

Sources

  1. Institutional[1] About the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Bibliotheca Alexandrina. www.bibalex.org retrieved 8 Oct 2026
    The library's own statement of purpose.
  2. Primary source[2] Snøhetta returns to Alexandria for anniversary lecture. Snøhetta. www.snohetta.com retrieved 8 Oct 2026
    The architects' news page, used only for the year the library opened.
  3. Institutional[3] Overview. Bibliotheca Alexandrina. www.bibalex.org retrieved 8 Oct 2026
    The library's own overview: its units and its annual visitors.
  4. Primary source[4] Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Snøhetta. www.snohetta.com retrieved 8 Oct 2026
    The architects' own project page: the competition, the building's dimensions and capacity. A firm describing its own work.