Henri Labrouste's 1850 reading room in the Latin Quarter — one of the most important works of 19th-century architecture, where exposed cast-iron arches soar over long rows of reading desks, daringly putting industrial iron on show inside a scholarly hall. Facing the Panthéon, the library pioneered the structural use of iron in a public building and remains a working reading room for students. For visitors with an interest in architecture, the great upstairs hall is a quiet revelation — a luminous, slender-columned space that showed the world how iron and glass could create beauty, not just span factories and stations.
Location
10 Place du Panthéon
Latin Quarter, Paris
Latin Quarter, Paris
labrousteironlibrary