Biblioteca Palafoxiana

The Biblioteca Palafoxiana is widely described as the first public library in the Americas. On 6 September 1646 Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, bishop of Puebla and a great lover of books, gave his own library of about 5,000 volumes to the Colegio de San Juan, the seminary he had founded, on one condition: it had to be open not just to clergy and students but to anyone who wanted to study. A royal decree approved the library in 1647 and Pope Innocent X confirmed it in 1648. It has stayed in the same building, the old Colegio de San Juan beside the cathedral, ever since.

The hall visitors see today came more than a century later. In 1773 Bishop Francisco Fabián y Fuero had a long vaulted gallery built on the college's upper floor, about 43 metres long, with two tiers of shelving carved by local cabinetmakers from ayacahuite pine, polocote and cedar, and an altarpiece at the far end with a painting of the Virgin of Trapani. A third tier was added in the 19th century as the collection kept growing with gifts from later bishops, other colleges and the books of the Jesuits, expelled in 1767. Today it holds roughly 45,000 old books plus manuscripts and pamphlets, from the 15th to the 20th century, in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and other languages. Among them are nine incunabula, including a copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle with hand-coloured engravings, as well as Vesalius on anatomy and Mercator's atlas.

The earthquakes of 1999 damaged the building and the overloaded shelves, and a long restoration followed with the support of INAH, the World Monuments Fund and Mexican foundations. The library was declared a national historic monument in 1981, and UNESCO added it to its Memory of the World Register in 2005. Visitors do not browse the books, which stay behind wire mesh; the experience is more like a museum, standing in the gallery under the white and gold vault with the smell of old paper and leather. Researchers can still ask to consult the collection.