The 35 Most Amazing Libraries In The World - Phillips Exeter Academy Library

With education as our focus here at The Best Colleges, we obviously love libraries. College libraries, public libraries, private libraries, it doesn’t matter, we think they are all awesome. With that in mind we’ve done hours of research trying to find the most interesting libraries in the world, and come up with these 35 that we thought were especially noteworthy. We’ve tried to balance our list between architecturally interesting libraries and libraries with interesting collections, but most of these libraries are actually fascinating in both respects. We’d love to spend a day in any of these libraries, and we hope you’ll agree.

27. Phillips Exeter Academy Library, Exeter, New Hampshire

 

 

The Phillips Exeter Academy Library is the largest secondary school library in the world. This is one of the most impressive libraries on our list, in a way, since it’s merely a part of a prep school (albeit one of the most wealthy prep schools in the world.) The architect of the Library was Louis Kahn, and the the structure has won numerous architectural awards, including a Twenty-five Year Award by the American Institute of Architects (given to no more than one building a year). The Library was commemorated on a US Postal Service stamp in 2005 as one of the Postal Services twelve Masterworks of Modern American Architecture.