Renovated National Library to open soon: Official

CAIRO - 15 May 2018: A renovated Egyptian National Library and Archives will soon be open to public, said its general supervisor Aida Abdel Ghani in a statement on Tuesday.

She added that all damage done to the national library following the heinous attack on nearby Cairo Police HQ in 2014 has been removed.

Renovation cost some 33 million pounds, which were offered as a grant from Sharjah ruler Sheikh Mohamed bin Sultan al Qassemi, she noted.

The Egyptian National Library and Archives, aka "Dar el-Kotob", in Cairo is the largest library in Egypt.

The second largest are the libraries of Al-Azhar University and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

The National Library, the oldest government library, houses several million volumes on a wide range of topics. It is one of the largest in the world with thousands of ancient collections.

It also contains a vast variety of Arabic-language and other Eastern manuscripts.

The main library is a seven-story building in Ramlet Boulaq, a district of Cairo. The Egyptian National Archives are contained in an annex beside the building.