At
a conference held in 1990 in Aswan, the
first pledges of funding for the project
were made: USD $65 million, mostly from
the Arab states. Construction work began
in 1995 and, after some USD $220 million
had been spent, the complex was officially
inaugurated on October 16, 2002. Alexandria's
state-of-the-art library, designed by
Christoph Kapellar, was inaugurated in
2001The dimensions of the project are
vast: the library has shelf space for
eight million books, with the main reading
room covering 70,000 m² on eleven
cascading levels. The complex also houses
a conference center; specialized libraries
for the blind, for young people, and for
children; three museums; four art galleries;
a planetarium; and a manuscript restoration
laboratory. The library's architecture
is equally striking. The main reading
room stands beneath a 32-meter-high glass-panelled
roof, tilted out toward the sea like a
sundial, and measuring some 160 m in diameter.
The walls are of gray Aswan granite, carved
with characters from 120 different human
scripts. Bibliotheca Alexandrina also
maintains a copy of the Internet Archive.
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