Admont Abbey Library

The monastery library of Admont Abbey, which was founded in 1074 and was completed in 1776, is a baroque monastic library wing in Admont in Upper Styria.
It has been called the eighth wonder of the world in the past. At 70 m long, 14 m wide and around 13 m high, it is the world's largest monastic book hall. This hall houses around 70,000 of the monastery's entire book inventory consists of 200,000 volumes.
The architect Josef Hueber (1715/7–1787) designed an ingenious three-part division of the space, vaulted by seven domes. 48 windows in combination with the white and gold bookcases provide a special brightness; For this reason, an artificial light source was never added later.
This concept was influenced by the Enlightenment: light was equated with knowledge and was intended to flow through the monastery library. The ceiling frescoes by Bartolomeo Altomonte (1694–1783), completed in 1776, show the various stages of human knowledge up to divine revelation in the central dome.[1] Below, on the shelves, are editions of the Bible and the Church Fathers; in the northern part of the hall there is theological literature and in the southern part there are books on secular sciences.
The sculpture decoration comes from the sculptor Josef Thaddäus Stammel (1695–1765). The last four things in the middle room are a highlight of his work in contrast to the Enlightenment concept of the architect and the painter. Created years earlier, these carvings are still uninfluenced by the Enlightenment.
Quote: Wikipedia