Sainte-Geneviève Library

The Sainte-Geneviève library and its 810 names

The Paris audio-guided tour takes you along the Sainte-Geneviève library, on Place du Panthéon. Looking at its façade, you notice names engraved in the stone: there are exactly eight hundred and ten, whose presence often intrigues passers-by.

The authors engraved in stone

These eight hundred and ten names are those of the authors whose works formed the basis of the library's collections at its beginnings. The library was built in the mid-nineteenth century, when Rue Soufflot leading to the Panthéon was cut through, by the architect Henri Labrouste. It is considered a masterpiece of iron-and-glass architecture.

What there is to see

The façade engraved with authors' names is already a spectacle in itself. Inside, the great reading room, with its exposed metal structure and its elegant vaults, is a model of nineteenth-century architecture. An interuniversity library still in activity, it remains a high place of student and intellectual life on the Left Bank.

Practical information

The Sainte-Geneviève library is on Place du Panthéon, in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. An interuniversity library, its access is reserved for its readers under its own conditions; the engraved façade can be contemplated freely from the square at all hours.

What do the names engraved on the façade represent?

They are the eight hundred and ten names of the authors whose works formed the basis of the library's collections at its beginnings.

When was the library built?

It was built in the mid-nineteenth century by the architect Henri Labrouste, when Rue Soufflot leading to the Panthéon was cut through.