National University Library of Strasbourg

This guide to the National University Library of Strasbourg opens on the night of August 24, 1870, when Prussian shells burned the Temple-Neuf church and destroyed the city's medieval library, including the illustrated Hortus Deliciarum. It follows librarian Karl August Barack's appeal for donations weeks later, which brought tens of thousands of volumes from libraries and even the German emperor himself, and the honey-stone domed building that architects August Hartel and Skjold Neckelmann raised to house the rebuilt collection. Look up at the facade's carved figures of Art and Science, worked around the names of the German scholars the building was built to honor.