An Enormous Ancient Library Has Been Discovered in Germany

n Cologne, Germany, the ruins of a large and ancient library have been unearthed which date back to 200AD. The building is thought to have housed over 20,000, not bad for a library built almost two thousand years ago.

As The Guardian reports, the ruins were first discovered in 2017 during an excavation project that took place on the grounds of a Protestant church in the city’s center. Cologne was founded by the Romans in 50AD under the name ‘Colonia’ and it remains one of Germany’s oldest cities. Archaeologists didn’t initially realise the ruins were once a library and were puzzled by the niches set in the walls for books.

“It took us some time to match up the parallels – we could see the niches were too small to bear statues inside. But what they are are kind of cupboards for the scrolls,” said Dr Dirk Schmitz from the Roman-Germanic Museum of Cologne. “They are very particular to libraries – you can see the same ones in the library at Ephesus.”

We can’t know for sure how many scrolls were kept in the library, but there were certainly a lot. Schmitz said it would have been “quite huge – maybe 20,000.” The library itself would apparently have been only a little smaller than the library at Ephesus, which was erected in 117 AD. Schmitz described the discovery as “really incredible – a spectacular find.”

“It dates from the middle of the second century and is at a minimum the earliest library in Germany, and perhaps in the north-west Roman provinces,” he said. “Perhaps there are a lot of Roman towns that have libraries, but they haven’t been excavated. If we had just found the foundations, we wouldn’t have known it was a library. It was because it had walls, with the niches, that we could tell.”

Schmitz believes the library would’ve been used by the general public. “It is in the middle of Cologne, in the marketplace, or forum: the public space in the city center. It is built of very strong materials, and such buildings, because they are so huge, were public,” he said.

The walls are to be preserved and will be viewable by the public in the cellar of the Protestant church community center, which is in the process of being built.