Advocates Library, Law library in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The Advocates Library is a law library in Edinburgh, housed inside Parliament House on the Royal Mile. It holds books, manuscripts, and legal documents covering Scottish and European law, spread across several floors and reading rooms.
The library was founded in 1682 and opened in 1689 to serve Scotland's legal community. It acted as Scotland's national library until 1925, when that role passed to a newly created institution.
The Advocates Library sits inside Parliament House, where Scottish lawyers have gathered for centuries to work and meet. The reading rooms are quiet and work-oriented, and the shelves hold handwritten and printed legal works from many different periods.
Access is generally restricted to the legal community, so it is worth asking in advance whether visits or tours are possible. The building sits in the heart of Edinburgh's Old Town, making the surrounding area easy to reach on foot.
Many of the library's European legal manuscripts are decorated with ornate drawings, suggesting they were made for dignitaries rather than everyday use. These decorated pages show how legal knowledge was also treated as a mark of status in the medieval period.
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