Austrian National Library

The State Hall of the Austrian National Library in Vienna, looking toward the oval dome and the statue at its center. Built in the 18th century as the hall of the imperial Court Library, it was designed by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and completed by his son Joseph Emanuel in 1726. Daniel Gran finished the ceiling paintings in 1730. The hall runs almost 80 meters and rises 20, with around 200,000 historical books on its dark wooden shelves, so the scale is closer to a palace than a reading room.