Real Gabinete Português de Leitura

This Portuguese reading room in central Rio is renowned for one of the most beautiful library interiors in the world, completed in 1887. Its facade is carved in the ornate Manueline revival style, echoing sixteenth-century Portuguese architecture with statues of navigators and writers. Inside, three galleries of dark carved wood rise around a central hall crowned by a stained-glass and iron skylight. The reading gallery holds tens of thousands of rare Portuguese-language volumes, and the book-lined space draws photographers and scholars.