Biblioteca Joanina

The Biblioteca Joanina at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, photographed in 2015, with the portrait of King John V at the far end. Named for the king who authorized it, the library was completed in 1728. Two stories of gilded, multicolored oak shelves line the walls and hold 60,000 books from the 16th to the 18th centuries. The room has a famous night shift: for about two and a half centuries, two colonies of bats have lived inside and kept the insects away from the books.