After the fire of 1940, this room and two adjacent rooms were remodeled by the Belgian architect Henry Lacoste. He managed to create a sense of unity through the double corridor and the frequent application of oak. The lion and the eagle at the bottom of the stairs to the corridor at the left side and the right side of the Reading Room, were made by Jacques Moeschal, the artist of the university’s emblem that you just saw in the hallway. The two animals keep the snake, as symbol of evil, in check. The snake follows the staircase upwards, to descend on the other side down to the ground. Be sure to take note of the corridors’ triangular balconies and look up at the panels on the balustrade to the left of the entrance door. As you can see, only two panels are worked; due to a lack of money the other panels were never completed. The Main Reading Room is 13 meters wide and 44 meters lo,g and contains about 40,000 books. This is only a fraction of the total collection: the other one and a half million volumes are in storage on the other side of the library. As you can see, the reading room is still in use. At the desk to the left, library clients come to pick up or return their books. Particularly during exam periods the reading room is packed with students. It is common for prominent visitors to drop by as well. Visitors from previous years include two American First Ladies, Barbara and Laura Bush, several American ambassadors, beloved author Umberto Eco and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon.

In the showcase you will find some remnants of burned books from 1914. They were put into sealed glass boxes, almost as a reliquary. Hence they are sometimes referred to as ‘Snow Whites’. In the middle of the showcase you can see a non-burned book. This is one of the rare survivors of the fires of 1914 and 1940.

Take a look around you one last time before leaving the Main Reading Room and walk back to the hallway. Turn right and enter the corridor with the double swing doors.

Would you like to listen to the walking instruction once again? Press A.

A