Tour of Biblioteca Thysiana

So yesterday we traveled to Leiden from Amsterdam, and visited one of the oldest library's in the world! It was called "Bibliotheca Thysiana", and its a public library in Leiden, close to Leiden University. Honestly, I loved this place! I was so amazed by the many books that were there, not to mention, the conditions that they were in! I was also very surprised to see how differently books were made back then. Call me crazy, but for some reason I thought that books back then were made the same way they are made today, but it turns out, they were not. As I saw, books back then all looked the same, and were really all "relatively" the same color. They were even ordered/placed by size of the book, and not alphabetically, or by genre. 

However, there was one book that stood out to me the most, and that was ... the Bible. This one Bible that was at this library was from the 17th century, and was from Germany, in German! However, aside from the fact that I couldn't understand what it said, because obviously I don't know how to read German, but what was really unique about this specific Bible was that the Bible itself had hand drawn and colored drawings, to go with the stories of the Bible! For example, I managed to take a picture of the Adam and Eve story, and the picture shows Adam and Eve being exiled from paradise, the garden of Eden, for eating the forbidden fruit, which was really cool! Because I thought it helps show the readers an idea of what that might've looked like, or been like. 

Though overall, I'm so grateful that I got to visit this library, and I can't wait to see what other adventures are to come! 

XOXO

-Ivan Almendariz