Pope Nicholas V (1447–1455) envisioned a new Rome, with extensive public works to lure pilgrims and scholars to the city to begin its transformation.

Nicolas wanted to create a "public library" for Rome that was meant to be seen as an institution for humanist scholarship.

His death prevented him from carrying out his plan, but his successor Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484) established what is now known as the Vatican Library.

In March 2014, the Vatican Library began an initial four-year project of digitising its collection of manuscripts, to be made available online.

Scholars have traditionally divided the history of the library into five periods: Pre-Lateran, Lateran, Avignon, Pre-Vatican and Vatican.

This period saw great growth in book collection and record-keeping by the popes in Avignon, between the death of Boniface and the 1370s when the papacy returned to Rome.

[5] In 1451, bibliophile Pope Nicholas V sought to establish a public library at the Vatican, in part to re-establish Rome as a destination for scholarship.

[6][7] Nicholas combined some 350 Greek, Latin and Hebrew codices inherited from his predecessors with his own collection and extensive acquisitions, among them manuscripts from the imperial Library of Constantinople.

Pope Nicholas also expanded his collection by employing Italian and Byzantine scholars to translate the Greek classics into Latin for his library.

[1] Nicolas was important in saving many of the Greek works and writings during this time period that he had collected while traveling and acquired from others.

[4] The number of manuscripts is variously counted as 3,500 in 1475[4] or 2,527 in 1481, when librarians Bartolomeo Platina and Pietro Demetrio Guazzelli produced a signed listing.

[7] Around 1587, Pope Sixtus V commissioned the architect Domenico Fontana to construct a new building for the library, which is still used today.

Restrictions were lifted during the course of the 17th century, and Pope Leo XIII was to formally reopen the library to scholars in 1883.

[6][7] In 1756, the priest Antonio Piaggio, curator of ancient manuscripts at the Library used a machine he had invented[12] to unroll the first Herculaneum papyri, an operation which took him months.

[13] In 1809, Napoleon Bonaparte arrested Pope Pius VII and had the contents of the library seized and removed to Paris.

Until this point in time, while it had drawn on the expertise of numerous experts, the Vatican Library was dangerously lacking in organization and its junior librarians were undertrained.

[6] Among a number of thefts from the Library committed in modern times, in 1995 art history teacher Anthony Melnikas from Ohio State University stole three leaves from a medieval manuscript once owned by Francesco Petrarch.

[1] At the bottom of a grand staircase a large statue of Hippolytus decorates the La Galea entrance hall.

[22] The three-year, 9 million euro renovation involved the complete shut down of the library to install climate controlled rooms.

[23] In the Sala di Consultazione or main reference room of the Vatican Library looms a statue of St Thomas Aquinas (c. 1910), sculpted by Cesare Aureli.

A second version of this statue (c. 1930) stands under the entrance portico of the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum.

Most famously Pico Della Mirandola lost the right to use the library when he published a book on theology that the Papal curia did not approve of.

[23] While the Vatican Library has always included Bibles, canon law texts, and theological works, it specialized from the beginning in secular books.

In 1623, in thanks for the adroit political maneuvers of Pope Gregory XV that had sustained him in his contests with Protestant candidates for the post of Elector, the hereditary Palatine Library of Heidelberg, containing about 3,500 manuscripts, was given to the Holy See by Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria.

Queen Christina of Sweden's important library (mostly amassed by her generals as loot from Habsburg Prague and German cities during the Thirty Years' War) was purchased on her death in 1689 by Pope Alexander VIII.

Among the most famous holdings of the library is the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209, the oldest known nearly complete manuscript of the Bible.

[23] Notable manuscripts in the library include: The library contains over 100 Quran manuscripts from various collections, cataloged by the Italian Jewish linguist Giorgio Levi Della Vida: Vaticani arabi 73; Borgiani arabi 25; Barberiniani orientali 11; Rossiani 2.

As of 2007[update], the library has microfilmed versions of over 37,000 manuscripts, with material in Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew and Ethiopic, as well as several more common Western European languages.