National Library of Russia

The National Library of Russia is the country's second-largest library by holdings and its oldest public library; residents of St Petersburg simply call it the "Publichka." Over two centuries it has changed its name several times: before the revolution it was the Imperial Public Library, then the State Public Library, and from 1932 to 1992 it bore the name of the writer Saltykov-Shchedrin. The idea of a publicly accessible book collection was already being discussed under Catherine II, and in May 1795 the empress approved the plans by the architect Yegor Sokolov for a building at the junction of Nevsky Prospect and Sadovaya Street. Construction dragged on for a decade and a half, and the opening took place only on 2 January 1814 — the day Alexander I first visited the reading rooms. The foundation of the foreign-language collection was the library of the Załuski brothers, brought from Warsaw. In 1810 a decree was signed requiring the free deposit of two copies of every printed publication in the country — Russia's first library law. The growing collection demanded new space: in the 1830s a wing designed by Carlo Rossi rose on the side facing the Catherine Garden, and thirty years later a large reading room was built for visitors to designs by Vasily Sobolshchikov. Among the library's rarest acquisitions is Voltaire's personal library of 6,814 volumes, bought by Catherine II from the philosopher's heir in 1778 and transferred here by decree of Alexander II in 1861, along with the Eastern manuscripts of the Karaite scholar Abraham Firkovich. By 1913 the holdings had exceeded three million items. By long-standing tradition dachshunds were kept here to deal with rodents, and today a small "cat brigade" lives within its walls. During the darkest years of the Siege of Leningrad, when the staff shrank to a quarter of its size, books continued to be issued to readers — more than a million and a half items over the war years. In 1949 the library was given the former Catherine Institute for Noble Girls on the Fontanka, built by Giacomo Quarenghi in the early 19th century. The institution received its present name in March 1992, by decree of President Yeltsin. At the turn of the millennium a new building rose on Moskovsky Prospect, designed by Vladimir Shcherbin; at its opening ceremony in 2003 the head of state compared the institution to a university for entire generations of Russians. Today the holdings approach thirty-seven million items, and among the four hundred thousand manuscripts are the mid-11th-century Ostromir Gospel, the 1377 chronicle containing the text of the Tale of Bygone Years, and a collection of seven thousand incunabula printed before 1501.