Bibliothèque Mazarine

The founder of the library, Cardinal Jules Raymond Mazarin (1602–1661), was born Giulio Ramondo Mazzarino in Pescina in the Kingdom of Naples, into a noble but poor family.

His talents brought him to the elder Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister of Louis XIII, who made him a member of the council of State of the King.

He immediately began constructing a palace for himself on rue de Richelieu in Paris, with an enormous chamber fifty-eight meters long designed especially to house his library.

[4] Mazarin then began a second library with what was left of the first, assisted by the successor to Naudé, François de La Poterie.

In his will written March 6, 1661, three days before his death, he bequeathed his library to the Collège des Quatre-Nations, a new college of the University of Paris that he founded for the sons of noble families from four provinces recently added to France.

The original bookcases of his library, decorated with carved Corinthian columns and with the coat of arms of the Cardinal, were moved to the new location in the east wing of the college, along rue de Richelieu.

He also collected works of art, mostly from the 17th and 18th centuries, gilded bronze chandeliers, Louis XVI commodes, a globe of the heavens by Gastellier from 1694, and other objects which decorate the reading room today.

In 1805, under Napoleon I, The Collège des Quatre-Nations became the Palace of the Institut de France, the headquarters of the French scholarly and scientific academies.

Since that time the Library has received donations of numerous large collections, and since 1926 has also been the depository of publications relating to the history of the regions of France.