The Vatican Apostolic Library will be closed to the public beginning in July 2007 for an extensive renovation project that is expected to take 3 years. The renovation project was unavoidable because of serious structural weaknesses in a wing of the 16th-century building in which the Library is housed. Architects determined that they could not strengthen foundations and floors without closing the building to the public. The library staff had sought to avoid inconveniencing the public (for instance, by moving over 300,000 books from rooms in which the floors had begun sagging) but expert consultants determined that the repairs could not be postponed. Once the decision was made to undertake the extensive repairs, Vatican officials seized the opportunity to modernize the building, adding air-conditioning and elevator service. The renovations will also allow for an overall reorganization of the library collection.
During the 3-year renovation period, Vatican Library officials will continue to provide research services to scholars through the ordering of reproductions. Some of the items in the library collection will be moved to temporary storage areas, but copies of ancient manuscripts and books will still be made available. The photographic reproduction service for researchers will continue to operate. The orders can be placed, as always according to the instructions on our internet site. (Photographic reproductions).
The Vatican Apostolic Library houses a priceless collection of over 1.6 million books, 8,300 incunabile, 75,000 manuscripts; and several archival documents (ca. 75,000 volumes), engravings (ca. 100,000), coins and medals (ca. 300,000). The collection includes the Codex Vaticanus, the oldest known manuscript of the Bible. The Vatican Library was set up around 1450 by Pope Nicholas V, who provided the first several hundred manuscripts from his personal collection because the libraries of the previous popes had been dispersed. In 1475, with the bull Ad Decorem Militantis Ecclesiae, Pope Sixtus IV gave the institution formal status, a regular budget, and a librarian. In 1587, Pope Sixtus V commissioned architect Domenico Fontana to design the building that still stands today.
Please note that the Knights of Columbus Vatican Film Library at Saint Louis University (http://www. slu.edu/libraries/vfl ) holds on microfilm more than 37,000 of the Vatican Library's manuscripts, comprising major portions of the Vatican's Greek, Latin, and Western European vernacular collections, in addition to materials in Arabic, Ethiopic, and Hebrew. The Vatican Film Library maintains a large reference collection of manuscript catalogues - including complete sets of the Vatican Library's published manuscript catalogues and unpublished inventories, as well as "Studi e testi" -and works in paleography, codicology, illumination, and other disciplines to support the study of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and their texts. The Vatican Film Library also holds the microfiche editions of the Bibliotheca Palatina, consisting of more than 12, 000 printed titles from the Vatican's Palatina collection, and the Cicognara Library, consisting of more than 4,800 printed titles from the Vatican's Cicognara collection on art, architecture, and archaeology. Many other resources help to make the Vatican Film Library a viable option for research in medieval and Renaissance manuscripts studies.