The Library of Alexandria; is a major library
and cultural center located on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea in the
Egyptian city of Alexandria. It is both a commemoration of the Library
of Alexandria that was lost in antiquity, and an attempt to rekindle something of the brilliance that this earlier center of study and erudition represented.
The idea of reviving the old library 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. The notion of recreating the ancient
library was soon enthusiastically adopted by other individuals and
agencies. One leading supporter of the project was former Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak; UNESCO was also quick to embrace the concept of
endowing the Mediterranean region with a center of cultural and
scientific excellence. An architectural design competition, organized by
UNESCO in 1988 to choose a design worthy of the site and its heritage,
was won by Snøhetta, a Norwegian architectural office, from among more
than 1,400 entries. At a conference held in 1990 in Aswan, the first
pledges of funding for the project were made: USD $65 million, mostly
from the Arab states. Construction work began in 1995 and, after some
USD $220 million had been spent, the complex was officially inaugurated
on October 16, 2002.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is trilingual,
containing books in Arabic, English and French. In 2010, the library
received a generous donation of 500,000 books from the National Library
of France, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). The gift makes the
Bibliotheca Alexandrina the sixth-largest Francophone library in the
world. The BA also is now the largest depository of French books in the
Arab world, surpassing those of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, in
addition to being the main French library in Africa.
The idea of reviving the old library 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. The notion of recreating the ancient
library was soon enthusiastically adopted by other individuals and
agencies. One leading supporter of the project was former Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak; UNESCO was also quick to embrace the concept of
endowing the Mediterranean region with a center of cultural and
scientific excellence. An architectural design competition, organized by
UNESCO in 1988 to choose a design worthy of the site and its heritage,
was won by Snøhetta, a Norwegian architectural office, from among more
than 1,400 entries. At a conference held in 1990 in Aswan, the first
pledges of funding for the project were made: USD $65 million, mostly
from the Arab states. Construction work began in 1995 and, after some
USD $220 million had been spent, the complex was officially inaugurated
on October 16, 2002.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is trilingual,
containing books in Arabic, English and French. In 2010, the library
received a generous donation of 500,000 books from the National Library
of France, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). The gift makes the
Bibliotheca Alexandrina the sixth-largest Francophone library in the
world. The BA also is now the largest depository of French books in the
Arab world, surpassing those of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, in
addition to being the main French library in Africa.