#40
Opening Hours
Sunday: 11:00 – 17:00
Monday: 09:30 – 20:00
Tuesday: 09:30 – 20:00
Wednesday: 09:30 – 20:00
Thursday: 09:30 – 20:00
Friday: 09:30 – 18:00
Saturday: 09:30 – 17:00
What's not to miss inside?
Treasures Gallery
A world tour in manuscriptsMagna Carta, Shakespeare’s First Folio, Jane Austen’s notebook, Beatles lyrics on scraps—history in its own handwriting.
📍 Lower ground floor
King’s Library Tower
George III’s books in a glass lighthouse65,000 volumes float behind glass from floor to roof; it’s both sculpture and stack.
📍 Central atrium
Reading Rooms
Silent engines of scholarshipOrder a book and the building goes to work—conveyors and lifts pull it from deep storage to your desk.
📍 Upper floors (Reader Pass required)
Sound Gallery & Events
Where a library listensFrom wax cylinders to radio archives, six million+ recordings widen ‘reading’ to hearing.
📍 Entrance level & programme venues
Piazza Sculptures
Art as wayfindingPaolozzi’s giant ‘Newton’ sits like a guardian; maps and quotes are set into the paving if you look down.
📍 Exterior plaza, Euston Road
🤓 Fun Facts
The British Library is one of the world’s largest: 170+ million items and counting, growing by miles of shelves each year through legal deposit.
St Cuthbert’s Gospel (c. 700) is the oldest intact European book—tiny, red-bound, and astonishingly well-preserved.
The building was the largest UK public project of the 20th century—designed by Colin St John Wilson, opened fully in 1998 after decades of planning.
Not all the library is in London: a vast site at Boston Spa in Yorkshire holds millions of items and dispatches them to readers nationwide.
Those Beatles lyrics? They’re drafts on envelopes and hotel paper—proof that pop history sometimes begins on the nearest scrap.
