The institution in question is located in the city of Melbourne, the capital of the state of Victoria, Australia. We are talking about the State Library of Victoria, which is one of the fifteen most beautiful libraries in the world. The building itself is so large that it occupies an entire block of the city’s business district. The repositories of this library house about 1.5 million volumes of various books and approximately 16 thousand periodicals. In this amount of literature can be found the diaries of the city fathers John P. Fokner and John Batman, as well as the famous navigator, Captain Cook.
Only in 1960 did the National Gallery of Victoria move to a new building, and the Melbourne Museum, which was also located in the library building, moved to a new building only in 1990. There is a park next to the Victoria State Library, where the inhabitants of Melbourne love to relax. There are many monuments and statues here: the statue of Sir Redmond Barry; the statue of St. George; statue of Joan of Arc. Every Sunday you can witness an oratory forum here, where everyone can speak and express their opinion on any issue.
The domed reading room was opened in 1913. It houses more than 1 million books and 500 readers can work here at the same time. The reading room has a diameter of about 34.75 meters. At the time it was built, the dome was the largest of its kind in the world. The architecture of the Victoria State Library is made in the style of colonial classicism.
In addition to its direct function as a repository of books, the library has become a real cultural center of the city’s social life. Various meetings with writers, exhibitions and seminars are held here.