Downtown central building:
Remote depository and technological building:
102 00 Praha 15 – Hostivař, Sodomkova 2/1146, Czech Republic
Tomáš Foltýn
Early Baroque period:
Carlo Lurago, Francesco Lurago, Giovanni Domenico Orsi;
High Baroque period:
Giovanni Antonio Lurago, František Maxmilian Kaňka, Kilian Ignatz Dientzenhofer
1924-1955:
Ladislav Machoň
1777 based on merging of older college libraries (the oldest one dating back to 1360)
The National Library of the Czech Republic is the central library of the Czech Republic. It is directed by the Ministry of Culture. The library’s main building is located in the historical Clementinum building in the centre of Prague, where approximately half of its books are kept. The other half of the collection is stored in the district of Hostivař. The National Library is the biggest library in the Czech Republic, housing around 7 million documents. The library has around 60,000 registered readers. As well as Czech texts, the library also stores older material from Turkey, Iran and India. The library also houses books for Charles University in Prague.
The library won international recognition in 2005 as it received the inaugural Jikji Prize from UNESCO via the Memory of the World Programme for its efforts in digitising old texts. The project, which commenced in 1992, involved the digitisation of 1,700 documents in its first 13 years.
The Bibliotheca astronomica exhibition provides an extraordinary opportunity to get acquainted with rare printed books on astronomical subjects dating back to the first quarter of a millennium after the invention of the printing press.
