The Room of Manuscripts

Nicholas I intended this attractive room, the "gem" of the whole library complex, to stun visitors with its luxurious decor. It is used for the display of bibliographic rarities - parchment manuscripts adorned with miniatures. The manuscripts contained in mirrored cases were obtained from the Public Library by imperial decree in 1851. Florian Gille, the head of the museum's First Department, gave the following description of the display: "Beginning in the ninth century, one can run through a whole cavalcade of centuries, pausing at illuminated Bibles, books of hours, allegorical romances and tales of chivalry, poems with classical subjects, the works of ancient and mediaeval authors - and proceed thus as far as the seventeenth century; moving, so to speak, through a palaeographic gallery, in which we find letters of all forms, decorated letters, capitals and vignettes of all sorts".

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