Bibliothèque Mazarine

The Bibliothèque Mazarine is distinguished by its grand reading room, where floor-to-ceiling wooden bookshelves are punctuated by slender Corinthian columns and ornate busts. Housed within the Palais de l'Institut de France at twenty-three Quai de Conti, it holds the title of the oldest public library in France. Cardinal Jules Mazarin, the influential seventeenth-century minister to Louis XIV, established the collection in sixteen forty-three, initially opening it to scholars once a week.