10 facts about the Library of Birmingham as it celebrates a decade

Credit: PA Images

Today is exactly 10 years on from the day in 2013 when the £188 million Library of Birmingham opened.

Here are 10 quirky facts about the Birmingham Library as it celebrates a decade:

The Library of Birmingham was opened by Malala Yousafzai. Malala was the teenage girl who had been shot by the Taliban for championing education rights for all females. After life saving surgery at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in February 2013, she studied at Edgbaston Girls School and then at Oxford University. In October 2014, she became the youngest recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize.
The Library of Birmingham was estimated to have cost around £188m. At the time of opening, it was the biggest library in Europe at 31,000 sq metres.
The Library has a secret garden on the roof, you'll need to head to the seventh level to find it.
The library became an operational hub for the Birmingham City Council Commonwealth Games Team in 2022 and a training venue for volunteers and other staff.

Malala Yousafzai officially opens the Library of Birmingham with the-then Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Cllr Mike Leddy. Credit: PA

The Map Room on the 4th floor of the Library of Birmingham includes highlights from more than 50,000 historic maps.
Library of Birmingham’s distinctive façade of has a total of 5,357 interlocking circles. The large black circles are 5.4 metres in diameter, the smaller silver circles are 1.8 metres in diameter.
It houses the second largest Shakespeare collection in the world in the Shakespeare Memorial Room at the top level of the library. It was originally crafted for the city's Victorian Library by John Henry Chamberlain, but following restoration works by local craftsmen it was rehomed in 2013.

The library was a focal point throughout the Commonwealth Games, with Olympian Max Whitlock launching the national ticket ballot in 2021. Credit: PA

Within 1 year of opening it became the 10th visited tourist attraction in the UK, as 2.4 million people came to see it by the end of 2014.
The eye-catching building was named overall West Midlands building of the year at the RIBA West Midlands Awards, and even nominated as one of six-short listed building for the prestigious 2014 Stirling Prize - for excellence in architecture.
The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien, who spent his childhood in Birmingham, was the first book to be put on the shelves of the Library of Birmingham. It is one of a million books kept there.