Alison Flood - 'Spectacular' ancient public library discovered in Germany
The remains of the
oldest public library in Germany, a building
erected almost two millennia ago that may have housed up to 20,000 scrolls,
have been discovered in the middle of Cologne. The walls were first
uncovered in 2017, during an excavation on the grounds of a Protestant church
in the centre of the city. Archaeologists knew they were of Roman origins, with
Cologne being one of Germany’s oldest cities, founded by the Romans in 50 AD
under the name Colonia. But the discovery of niches in the walls, measuring
approximately 80cm by 50cm, was, initially, mystifying.
“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.”
It is not clear how
many scrolls the library would have held, but it would have been “quite huge –
maybe 20,000”, said Schmitz. The building would have been slightly smaller than
the famed library at Ephesus, which was built in 117 AD. He 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.”
The building would
have been used as a public library, Schmitz said. “It is in the middle of
Cologne, in the marketplace, or forum: the public space in the city centre. It
is built of very strong materials, and such buildings, because they are so
huge, were public,” he said. The walls will be
preserved, with the three niches to be viewable by the public in the cellar of
the Protestant church community centre, which is currently being built...
