40 Breathtaking Libraries Around the World (PHOTOS)

According to Albert Einstein, “the only thing that you absolutely have to know is the location of the library.”

It’s long been believed that libraries are vital to the development of healthy, literate societies, especially today when libraries are some of the only places offering adult literacy classes. 

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Many of the libraries pictured above, like the Codrington Library at All Souls College (a constituent college of Oxford University that opened in 1751), have been around for centuries. Others, like the Stuttgart City Library in Germany, which opened in October 2011, are much more recent additions to the category of visually-remarkable libraries.

Click through the slideshow above and get inspired to read. Or at least to get a library card.

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