The Alexandrina Library celebrated 20 years as the new beacon of knowledge

Alexandria is a city that captivates with its magnificence. The city and port that overlooks the Maremágnum, founded 2,300 years ago by Alexander the Great, was the cultural center of the ancient world and the epicenter of knowledge. Today it continues to be the pride of Egypt and of all humanity.

In addition to having the longest boardwalk on the planet, with almost 20 kilometers, centuries-old mosques, the castle of King Farouk, the Montazah Palace, among its incomparable wonders, the city is emblematic and famous in history for the ancient Library of Alexandria, that brought together all the knowledge available in the known universe, a veritable melting pot of cultures, at whose port the ships arrived and the scrolls from overseas were immediately seized to be translated into Greek, after which they delivered the copy to the crew and the original was transferred to the library collection.

The hyperbolic legend ensures that during the rule of the Ptolemies, the library came to gather more than a million volumes containing knowledge about philosophy, history, medicine, mathematics and astronomy, and that it was the largest reservoir illustrious of Antiquity until its total disappearance in the first half of the 1st century AD, first after a fire, which consumed a large part of the collection, and then due to various looting, invasions and wars.

More than 1,600 years later, the dream of Alexander the Great, like a crackling flame, materialized again in the same place where the lighthouse of wisdom once stood, the new and modern Biblioteca Alexandrina, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2022, since its opening.

Built within the extinct royal perimeter of the Bruquión (on the city’s boardwalk), where palaces surrounded by splendid gardens were formerly erected, inhabited by the Ptolemaic elite during the three centuries that their monarchy lasted, today it stands as a complex of avant-garde architecture, which, seen from the sea it resembles a spaceship, a creation of the Norwegian firm Snøhetta, which cost 230 million dollars contributed by the Egyptian government and UNESCO, and which make the Alexandrina Library one of the wonders of modern architecture, World Heritage of Humanity, which will never replace that of Antiquity but which honors it by far and is at its level.

From the sea or from the highest area of ​​the city, a monumental cylinder cut diagonally, built with cement, glass and granite, can be seen. The façade, made with materials brought from Aswan, presents calligraphic bas-reliefs from most of the world’s languages; the artist Jorunn Sannes used the same ancient technique of the Egyptians to engrave rocks; letters, hieroglyphs, pictograms and symbols from more than 120 different scripts give relief to the monument.

The roof alludes to the Egyptian god Ra, solar divinity. Made with glass panels inclined towards the sea, they resemble a sundial; This cover is designed and built in such a way that the combination of glass and aluminum filters the interior light.

Visiting and admiring it is an experience in itself. The building consists of eleven levels, four of which are below ground. In addition to a huge consultation room, the site has six specialized collections, a planetarium, four museums (Antiquities, Manuscripts, History of Science and President Anwar Sadat), 12 academic research centers and four exhibition galleries. Visitors can also see some of the 15 permanent exhibitions it has, just to mention a few are the Mohamed Ibrahim Collection, of Arabic calligraphy; Bulaq, the first Egyptian press whose inaugural printing was an Italian-Arabic dictionary in 1822 and a display of contemporary Egyptian sculptures.

The complex, built to be fireproof, occupies a total area of ​​85,000 m², is designed to house 20 million volumes, and currently only has 5 million, of which 10,000 are manuscripts, 50,000 incunabula, 50,000 maps, in addition to a large digitized collection that can be consulted online.

In the main room alone, located in the center of the building, 500,000 volumes are kept, which, due to this characteristic and its capacity for 2,000 readers in its 30,000 m², is considered the largest reading room in the world.

Like an Egyptian-style hypostyle hall, supported by concrete columns clad in wood, the hall extends over several levels until it reaches 16 meters below sea level.

It is provided with natural light that passes through glass panels that make up the roof of the monumental cylinder, forming windows specially designed to let light in, but avoiding direct sunlight that could damage the collection.

The social sciences, Egyptology, the Islamic world and education are the most requested areas for those who make face-to-face consultations, and electronic materials and biology lead digital consultations.

This new epicenter of knowledge receives a million visitors annually, the vast majority of them students from all over the world, from where they can watch a sunset over the Mediterranean from the main esplanade, presided over by a bronze bust dedicated to the founder of the city and the old enclosure: Alexander the Great.

francisco.deanda@eleconomista.mx