The Bibliotheca is part of Shanghai Library and is housed within the Ignatius Church built by the French Jesuit Society in the 1847. Its distinctive villa architecture is listed as a protected building by the Shanghai government, and includes the main building which used to be the priests residence during the 19th Century, and a smaller building which used to store religious books.
Shanghai city has spent 4 years renovating the interior, and the result is a strange mixture of colonial 1930's interior with an exterior from obviously a much earlier period. This doesn't mean however that it is unpleasant to walk around. On the contrary the cool marble and dark oak interior makes an ideally peaceful location for a library.
The bibliotheca itself is located on the second floor and has the city's largest collection of old foreign language books, documents and encyclopedias. The figures are impressive: a collection of 560,000 volumes, transcripts and other historical documents in 20 languages dating back to 1515. However you won't be able to see any of these, or even enter the library without a Shanghai library membership card.
The exception to this is Saturday from 14:00 to 16:00 when there is a free tour of the library.
Address: No.80, Caoxi Rd. N., near Puxi Rd.
Tel: 6456-6085, 6457-6327
Ticket Price: Free for general visits.
Open Hours: Mon-Sat, 9am-5pm for library pass holders. For general visitors Saturday 2pm-4pm
Traffic: Metro line 1 (Xujiahui station), take Exit 3 and turn left. |
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