Vatican Library to Reopen with Hi-Tech Security

By Maryann Yin 

vaticanlib.JPGThe Vatican Apostolic Library will reopen on September 20th. The Vatican closed the library for three years during large-scale renovations, installing climate-controlled rooms for manuscript preservation and state-of-the-art security measures for theft prevention.

The renovation decision came following a 1987 theft at the library. Ohio State University art history professor Anthony Melnikas smuggled out pages from Petrarch’s 14th-century manuscript. After being caught, Melnikas was sentenced to fourteen months in jail.

The Huffington Post notes: “[A] new tower inside the Vatican’s Belvedere Courtyard [ferries] manuscripts from their bomb-proof bunker to climate-controlled consultation rooms. Inside the bunker itself, fire-proof and dust-proof floors and walls were installed to further protect the manuscripts. The library’s 70,000 books have been outfitted with computer chips to prevent loss and theft, closed-circuit cameras have been installed and new automated entry and exit gates keep tabs on who is coming in and going out.”


Pope Nicholas V started the library in the 1450s. Now, it boasts an impressive collection of 150,000 volumes of illuminated manuscripts (including a replica of the illuminated Urbino Bible), 70,000 book titles, and the oldest known complete Bible (believed to be made in the year 325). Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons novel catapulted the neighboring Vatican Secret Archives to fame.