Libraries to visit England

This gigantic neoclassical library with a dome looks the largest in Manchester. Opened for the first time in 1934 by King George V, it received £ 48 million over four years, until March 2014. So, today, the Mancuniens take pleasure in taking over this building, imposing in the heart of their city, just steps from the town hall. If the huge Reading Room, its 300 seats, its marble columns and its central pendulum are the main attraction, the monument houses a very popular music section and a coffee on the ground floor. There are also 30 books dating back to 1500, as well as exceptional collections on the work of composers Handel and Vivaldi, or writer Elizabeth Gaskell. A place where it's right to stop.

The UK's largest university library contains more than 9 million books. Many personalities have studied within its walls: 5 kings, 40 Nobel Prize winners and 25 English Prime Ministers, and writers Oscar Wilde, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Sir Thomas Bodley built the first wing in 1602. To see, The Old Schools Quadrangle, square square at the entrance, The Divinity School, The Medieval Duke's Humfrey's Library, used for the films Harry Potter, The Radcliffe Camera, first rotunda library built in Britain.

You will need to be well organized not to miss this visit, which takes place only one hour a day. The building built in 1737 is the place where Lenin had an office from 1902 to 1903, publishing 17 editions of the Bolshevik newspaper Iskra. This office is maintained as it was at the time and can still be visited. The library itself was opened in 1933 to mark the 50th anniversary of Karl Marx's death. It gathers a beautiful collection of books on the history of Marxism, socialism and social movements.

The British Library collects every text published in England. It has 325 km of shelving and can hold no fewer than 12 million books. Permanent exhibition rooms showcase historical documents such as the Magna Carta and the Gutenberg Bible, as well as literary documents such as the complete works of Shakespeare, dating from 1623, and the handwritten and illustrated copy ofAlice in Wonderland that Lewis Carroll gave to Alice Liddell, the little girl who inspired him to write the book. But also texts by the Beatles.