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Bodleian Library

Cultural and Institutional Buildings

The Bodleian Library is the main research library of the University of Oxford, its core building dating to the early seventeenth century when Sir Thomas Bodley refounded and expanded a smaller medieval university library, giving the institution and its historic quadrangle building his name. Its oldest surviving reading room, Duke Humfrey's Library, sits above the fifteenth-century Divinity School, whose vaulted stone ceiling is elaborately carved with intricate lierne vaulting and hundreds of decorative bosses, considered one of the finest examples of English Gothic stonework. The library's Tower of the Five Orders, forming one side of the Old Schools Quadrangle, displays all five classical architectural orders stacked in sequence up its facade as a deliberate architectural demonstration piece. The complex has expanded over the centuries into a network of connected historic buildings across central Oxford while continuing to function as a working library.

Facts
Building Type
Research library 1
Location
Broad Street, Oxford, United Kingdom 1
Completed Year
1602 1
Classification
Standing Status
Standing 1
Building Type
Building Type (category)
Educational / College 1
Connections

Has Building Type

Entity-backed identity for the building-type enum value this building already carries, resolved to an architecture concept by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The building-type fact itself stays on the building unchanged.

In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Bodleian Library, Wikipedia
  • Lead section, first sentence
    the main research library of the University of Oxford
  • Infobox, location
    Broad Street, Oxford, United Kingdom
  • infobox building_type/type field: Academic library
  • Entity description and the lead/infobox of the Wikipedia article
    The Bodleian Library is the main research library of the University of Oxford, its core building dating to the early seventeenth century when Sir Thomas Bodley refounded and expanded a smaller medieval university library, giving the institution and its historic quadrangle building his name. Its oldest surviving reading room, Duke Humfrey's Library, sits above the fifteenth-century Divinity School, whose vaulted stone ceiling is elaborately carved with intricate lierne vaulting and hundreds of decorative bosses, considered one of the finest examples of English Gothic stonework. The library's Tower of the Five Orders, forming one side of the Old Schools Quadrangle, displays all five classical architectural orders stacked in sequence up its facade as a deliberate architectural demonstration piece. The complex has expanded over the centuries into a network of connected historic buildings across central Oxford while continuing to function as a working library.
  • Wikipedia infobox completion_date/completed/built field (1602)
    The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1602 by Sir Thomas Bodley, it is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second-largest library in Britain after the British Library. Under the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, it is one of six legal deposit libraries for works published in the United Kingdom,
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