Biblioteca Palafoxiana

In 1646 Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza gave his 5,000 books to the diocese of Puebla on one revolutionary condition: anyone who could read must be allowed in. That clause makes the Palafoxiana the first public library of the Americas, and its hall - built out in 1773 - survives as one of the most beautiful rooms on the continent: forty-three metres of cedar, coloyote and ayacahuite shelving in three tiers, gold-lettered spines rising to a vaulted ceiling, with the gilded altarpiece of the Virgin of Trapani closing the perspective like the apse of a book cathedral. The collection grew to some 45,000 volumes - nine incunabula among them, including a 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle - covering theology, medicine, botany and the sciences a colonial elite argued over. UNESCO entered it in the Memory of the World register in 2005. Visitors walk the central aisle under the tiers; the books stay shelved in their centuries-old order, consulted now by scholars under glass and lamplight.

What you actually see

• The great hall - three cedar tiers of gold-spined volumes.
• The Trapani altarpiece - the gilded Virgin closing the room.
• The incunabula cases - printing's first decades on display.
• The reading aisle - onyx-topped tables down the center.

When to go

Any day but Monday; morning light through the high windows is the photographer's window. It pairs in a single block with the cathedral and Casa de la Cultura patios.

Honest expectations

It is one sublime room - most visits run well under an hour. Books cannot be handled; this is architecture and atmosphere, not browsing. Flash and tripods are barred.

Nearby

The cathedral next door, the Amparo museum three blocks south and the sweets street of 6 Oriente within a short walk.