Discover What’s Inside the Vatican Library | Library of the Holy See

• Founded in: 1475
• Founder: Pope Nicholas V
• Location: The Belvedere Courtyard, which is located within the Vatican Palace, serves as the entrance to the Vatican Library.
• Departments: Manuscript Department, Printed Books Department, Numismatic Department
• Collections: Manuscripts, Archival collections, Printed Books, Graphic Materials, Numismatic Collections, and Art Objects.

• Nearly 2,000,000 printed volumes and serials, including over 8,000 incunabula, are preserved in the Vatican Library.
• Between 1927 and 1939, the Library of Congress and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace assisted with the modernization of the Vatican Library's book catalog system.
• The Vatican library has 75,000 manuscripts in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Ethiopian, and Syriac charting back to the 2nd century
• Approximately 6,000 new volumes are added to the library each year. Only about a quarter are purchased while the rest are gifts.

Manuscript Collections

The Vatican Library boasts an incredible collection of manuscripts. Some of the manuscripts housed inside the library include Carte d'Abbadie, Boncompagni Ludovisi, Libri minuscoli, Papiri Vaticani copti, Raccolta Rospigliosi, Vaticani musicali, and over 100 others.

Archival Collections

The Archival collection at the Vatican Library is equally impressive. The collection includes Archivio Barberini, Archivio Barberini Colonna di Sciarra, Autografi e Documenti Patetta, Computisteria Ottoboni, Pergamene Patetta, S. Maria in Cosmedin, and many more.

Printed Books Collections

The Vatican Library houses over 1,600,000 printed books, the majority of which are old and rare, including over 8,600 incunabula; tens of thousands of sixteenth-century editions, and seventeenth-century editions, particularly in the Barberini and Chigi collections.

Graphic Materials

The Graphics collection at the Vatican Library is home to some breathtaking pieces of art including Fondo Stampe, Fondo Stampe Geografiche, Raccolta fotografica, Fondo Bianchi Barriviera, and more. The Ashby Collection and the Gismondi Collection are two autonomous closed collections of a specified size that are part of the Graphics collection.

Vatican Secret Archives

The Vatican Secret Archives house all of the Holy See's acts, as well as state papers, letters, papal account books, and a variety of other documents acquired throughout the centuries by the church. The Secret Archives were split from the Vatican Library in the 17th century, when scholars had restricted access to them, and were completely inaccessible to outsiders. In 1881, Pope Leo XIII opened them for researchers, with 1000s examining its contents each year.

Vatican Film Library

The Vatican Film Library in St. Louis, Missouri, is the only repository of microfilms from the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Vatican Library. It can be found in the Pius XII Library on the Saint Louis University campus. Lowrie J. Daly designed the library, which was funded by the Knights of Columbus. The purpose was to increase the accessibility of the Vatican and other materials to North American academics.

 Origins

In the early half of the thirteenth century, the Popes' first library and archive were scattered for reasons that are yet unknown. Following Boniface VIII's death, new collections gathered by the Popes of that century were relocated to Perugia, Assisi, and eventually to Avignon. The popes who returned to Rome after 1415 attempted to reclaim the lost library heritage at various times; what was left in Avignon at the start of the 17th century ended up in the Borghese family's collection, which Leo XIII purchased in 1891.

Nicholas V to Sixtus V

The beginning of the modern history of the Vatican Library can be traced back to the mid-14th century. Nicholas V was the one who decided that scholars should be able to read and study the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew texts. With the appointment of a librarian, Bartolomeo Platina, and the required financial assistance, Sixtus IV resumed, finalised, and carried out Nicholas V's mission. The new institution was housed on the ground floor of a structure that Nicholas V had already renovated. From a total of 2,527 manuscripts in 1475 to a total of 3,498 in 1481, the collection continued to grow.

16th and 18th Centuries

The Library continued to grow in the 16th century, especially under Leo X, with methodical research and acquisitions of manuscripts and printed works. Throughout the 17th century, complete princely or private libraries started being incorporated into the collection. Many of these have been turned into unique, closed manuscript and printed book compilations, different from the open collections that began in the library itself. The 18th century saw the creation and gradual expansion of departments devoted to antiquarian and creative collections in the Vatican Library.

19th and 20th Centuries

When Rome was annexed to the French Empire in 1809, the Vatican Library became a National Library, and the holdings of religious orders were added. The library was opened to a greater public of academics and historians under Leo XIII, and the modern Reading Room for Printed Books was established in 1892. When the arrival of automobiles made the old stables at the Cortile del Belvedere obsolete in 1927, Pope Pius XI decided to convert them into stacks for the Library's printed books. New stacks holding manuscripts were created beneath the Vatican Library's internal courtyard from 1982 to 1984, thanks to funding from the German Episcopal Conference.

Accessions

Rare books, contemporary books, journals, digital resources, and other non-book resources are all handled by the Accessions Section. This section's primary responsibility is to handle the administration facets of integrating publications into the Vatican Library's holdings. The routine activities are mostly focused on acquisitions, but also deal with materials that come in via contributions or exchange programs.

Catalog

Even though a unified catalogue for printed materials had been hoped for for a century, a systematic catalogue was finally organised in the 1920s. The contemporary general catalogue of the Vatican Library's printed books was established in 1928; previously, the various collections had their own catalogues, prepared in the scope of each collection and according to distinct criteria. The Vatican Library's cataloguing standards were initially published in 1931, and the third and final edition was issued in 1949.