Knowledge of centuries in one place: the historic library of the Cistercian Abbey in Zirc

The library is the collection of the distinguished Roman Catholic order of monks, the Cistercians. King Béla III granted an estate and a settlement permit to the monks arriving from Clairvaux in 1182. The abbey therefore began to flourish at that time, but unfortunately the monastery, together with the library, perished during the Turkish expansion. Thereafter, the abbey was re-established only in the first half of the 1700s by Silesian monks, who erected a magnificent Baroque building – with a library room inside. The first manuscript volume catalogue was prepared in 1815, at which time 2,135 works were listed in 4,157 volumes. The library stock began to grow at a rapid pace in the 19th century, thanks to the monks embarking on scientific work and also taking up teaching. A few decades later, no fewer than 65,000 volumes, books, and journals enriched the knowledge of the monks and intellectuals in the area.

Although the National Széchenyi Library took over the supervision of the library in 1953, Cistercian monks live within the walls of the abbey to this day. Today, the monument library fulfils a dual function: it serves as a museum with the help of a professional guide (with guided tours only), and also as a specialist library, with its valuable stock of books.