Biblioteca Nacional de España, National library in Madrid, Spain
The Biblioteca Nacional de España stands in a neoclassical building with a rectangular floor plan between Recoletos Avenue and Serrano Street in Madrid. The structure rises over several floors and includes reading rooms, storage areas for millions of volumes, archive spaces, and a public exhibition area on the ground level.
King Philip V founded the Royal Library at the end of 1711 as part of the Bourbon reforms to modernize Spanish institutions. The house opened its doors to the public in March 1712, becoming one of the first accessible libraries in Europe.
The institution bears the formal name Biblioteca Nacional de España and manages the complete bibliographic heritage of Spanish language on the Iberian peninsula. Its legal mandate requires all Spanish publishers to submit one copy of every printed work into this collection.
Visitors need a reader or researcher card to access the collections, issued through a registration process at the front desk. Opening hours run from Tuesday to Saturday 10:00 to 21:00 and Sunday 10:00 to 14:00, with Monday as the weekly closing day.
The ground floor hosts an exhibition space called El Infierno y las Maravillas, which presents the evolution from ancient alphabets to future writing technologies. This room links handwritten codices with digital media and allows visitors to trace the transformation of written communication across millennia.
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