The Bibliotheca Alexandrina was set up by Demetrius Phalereus, a disciple of Aristotle, with the aim of establishing a great research centre with a universal library. The word bibliotheca comes from the Greek word for ‘book’, as the library belonged to the Hellenistic period.
The library was bestowed with many prominent Greek writers and researchers and contains a vast collection of books and over seven hundred thousand scrolls and papyrus documents.
During the decline of this cultural period, the library was destroyed. Finally the Egyptian President took the initiative in restoring the library and thus in October 2001 the library was initially opened to the public.
The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina was designed by a Norwegian architect as a circular diaphragm wall of one hundred and sixty meters diameter, thirty three meters high. It consists of eleven floors with a total seating area of 85,405 square meters.
The library contains 8m books, 4,000 periodicals, 50,000 manuscripts and rare books, 50,000 maps as well as audio-visual and multimedia materials and a computerised database.
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