At the weekend, I finally paid my first visit to the Portico Library in Manchester, as part of the Heritage Open Days weekend. Credited as one of Manchester’s hidden gems, the library is a beautiful and cosy corner of peace and quiet in the centre of the city.
We were kindly treated to a free tour of the library, which has a pretty interesting history. Opened in 1806, the library pre-dates the Dewey Decimal system and so uses a ‘shelf-fit’ system instead, and the original features on show include a working barometer and a functioning weather vane and clockface which show the direction of the wind.
The oldest book in the library dates from 1550 and is an encyclopaedia of the World’s ‘known’ plants and animals, including – among others – unicorns and werewolves…
Here are a few of my pics from the beautiful library.
The library looks lovely!! I especially like the ‘Polite Literature’ section… is there an ‘Impolite Literature’ section??
Haha, unfortunately not! Disappointingly, it wasn’t covered in the tour why exactly ‘polite literature’ was a necessary section…
I love discovering interesting libraries. My favorite one is in Porto, but this one looks really really nice, I wouldn’t mind seeing it for myself.
It is open to the public but at quite inconvenient times. Would recommend though, very charming and quaint. Next stop is Chetham’s library in Manchester, where Marx and Engels met!
Love the ceiling of the library!
Me too, it’s beautiful!