Institución Colombina

He had a generous income from his father's New World demesne, and used a sizable fraction of it to buy books, eventually amassing a personal library of over 15,000 volumes.

Third, he employed full-time librarians who, as the scholar Klaus Wagner noted, were required to live on the premise in order to ensure that their top priority would be the library itself.

Provisions were made in his will to ensure that the library would be maintained after his death, specifically that the collection would not be sold and that more books would be purchased.

Despite this precaution, the ownership of the library was contested for several decades after Fernando's death until it passed into the hands of the Cathedral in Seville, Spain.

However the library, renamed the Biblioteca Colombina, has been well maintained by the Cathedral and today it is accessible for consultation by scholars, students and bibliophiles alike.