Features

ateneu barcelonés

Ateneu’s jewel

The li­brary of the Ateneu Barcelonès (an athenaeum is an in­sti­tu­tion for the pro­mo­tion of cul­ture and learn­ing), which is lo­cated on the first floor of the old Savas­sona Palace in the cen­tre of Barcelona, is the jewel in the crown of one of the coun­try’s most no­table cul­tural in­sti­tu­tions. Cre­ated in 1872 when the col­lec­tions of the Cata­lan Cen­tre and the Casino Mer­can­til Barcelonès were merged, dur­ing its more than 150 years of his­tory the li­brary has man­aged to gather to­gether some 300,000 vol­umes, mak­ing it one of the largest book col­lec­tions in the coun­try. It is also one of the coun­try’s most im­por­tant col­lec­tions and al­most a third of the ti­tles it con­tains that were pub­lished be­fore 1901 can­not be found in any other li­brary.

The Ateneu Barcelonès is also a sig­nif­i­cant ex­am­ple of how, at a time when the coun­try lacked pub­lic fa­cil­i­ties, many cul­tural or­gan­i­sa­tions filled the gap. It should be borne in mind that the Li­brary of Cat­alo­nia, cre­ated in 1914, would not be at the same level of the Ateneu Barcelonès in terms of the quan­tity and value of its bib­li­o­graphic col­lec­tion until well into the 1920s.

How­ever, the unique­ness of this li­brary lies not only in its book col­lec­tion, which is the re­sult of its long his­tory and cul­tural sig­nif­i­cance, but also due to the build­ing in which it is lo­cated, and in the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of which par­tic­i­pated the cel­e­brated Barcelona ar­chi­tect, Josep Maria Jujol. The or­gan­i­sa­tion’s web­site also points out that the li­brary “is ideal as a set­ting for shoot­ing films, doc­u­men­taries and in­ter­views with promi­nent fig­ures in the cul­tural sec­tor”. It is also ideal for let­ting time pass by with a good book in un­par­al­leled sur­round­ings.

Fea­ture Cul­ture and her­itage

Pho­to­graphic Atlas of the Moon

Year: 1894-1910

Printer: Paris Ob­ser­va­tory

A lunar rediscovery

“We rediscovered this when the offices were re-done. It had not even been catalogued. This lunar atlas pioneered the use of photography in astronomy. It was the work of astronomers Maurice Loewy and Pierre-Henri Puiseux. The project began in 1894 but was not completed until 1910. It contains enlargements of detailed prints showing the Moon’s surface, one of the first to do so... it had a big impact.”

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