Books and Paper–CFFC–Ireland’s Trinity College

I am not a library tourist, meaning visiting libraries around the world are not one of my ‘must do’s’ while traveling, but I couldn’t resist seeing the Trinity College Library in Dublin, Ireland several years ago. The building was beautiful, the ‘stacks’ were inviting, and one wanted to sit and absorb the peace and beauty of the place. And as part of the treasurers hidden in the library is the Book of Kells Exhibit.

The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables.

Here are pictures of the library and one of the Sphere within Sphere sculpture on the college campus.

Not only are the stairs to the upper level of the library a work of art, they are intriguing and inviting.

And what is a world class library without a bust of the most famous Shakespeare?

The Sphere Within Sphere, also known as Sfera con Sfera, is a series of sculptures created by Italian sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro depicting an enormous metal sphere with a cracked surface revealing an intricate interior with another cracked sphere inside. Pomodoro originally created it for the Vatican Church in the 1960s, but later began building them for other organizations and can now be found in prime locations all over the world such as the Headquarters of the UN in New York, Trinity College in Dublin, The Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, USA, The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, the Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus and the Tel Aviv University in Israel, to name a few. I took the picture at the Vatican several years prior to visiting Ireland.

Trinity College Vatican