Library of Trinity College Dublin

The Long Room, Trinity College Dublin, with its shelves full in 2015. Built between 1712 and 1732, the room first had a flat plaster ceiling. When the shelves filled under the library's right to a copy of every book published in Britain and Ireland, the roof was raised in 1860 for the barrel vault and upper gallery seen here. At nearly 65 meters, the room normally holds 200,000 of the library's oldest books, watched over by marble busts collected since 1743. The Old Library is being redeveloped and the busts went into storage in 2023, so check what is on show before you plan a visit.