National Library Museum

The purpose of this museum is to show the importance of books throughout history. In its eight rooms, you can peruse original books, find out about the work of a librarian, or learn the secrets of Miguel de Cervantes. The National Library aims to contribute to the city’s cultural life by providing public educational activities which cannot easily be found in a standard museum programme.

Walking through the eight rooms, visitors can learn about the history of books in an entertaining, educational and creative way. The first room presents the past and present of the Library with the aid of visual resources and a small interactive architectural model. The second room explains the key tasks of a librarian’s work. The third contains a compilation of different types of media used to record our thoughts: from tree bark or tortoise shells to parchment. The showcases in the fourth room exhibit 25 original texts, chosen from the Library’s collection, which change every three months. In the fifth room reproductions and facsimiles trace the development of books, from the Metz codex to the Internet. Cervantes and Don Quixote are the protagonists in the seventh room, which brings together bibliographic resources, audiovisual and multimedia resources, dealing with the most famous writer of Spain’s Golden Age.

Finally, the other two rooms, 6 and 8, are for different educational activities, such as puppet shows and literary workshops for children. The last room is designed as a Museum-Space in itself, with a video area, a small theatre, and a larger space for events with big audiences.