Bodmer Library

Brief Information

The Bodmer Library did not grow out of a state book repository, but from the private collection of Martin Bodmer. In 1951, he bought two mansions in Cologny near Geneva to house his collection of rare books and manuscripts. That is why the place should be understood not only as a library, but as a deliberately assembled map of written culture transferred into a separate space.

The scale of the collection matters not in itself, but because of the range of its materials: about 170,000 books and manuscripts in 80 languages. Papyrus scrolls, medieval manuscripts, early printed books, and autographs of literary and musical works sit side by side in a single collection. This contrast helps one see the library as a place where it was not the themes that changed, but the very ways of preserving text.

What to Notice First

The source text says almost nothing about the layout of the rooms, so it is better to keep the focus on the collection objects themselves. You can compare the papyri from the 2nd to 7th centuries with the Gutenberg Bible: the first material is linked to the ancient handwritten transmission of text, the second to the early European printed book. Between them lies not simply a difference in age, but a change in medium and technique.

It is worth noting the 11th-century manuscript of Old Roman chant and the illuminated 14th-century Roman de la Rose: both objects show that text here was not always only something to be read. In one case it is connected with singing, in the other with the crafted medieval book. One especially striking fact is the only surviving manuscript of Menander’s comedy Dyskolos: after it, the ancient section reads not as a selection of antiquities, but as a place where one surviving copy can stand in for an entire lost tradition.