Georgia’s First Book Museum to Open in 2016

TBILISI – Georgia’s first book museum will open later this year in the National Parliamentary Library and will be the biggest in the Caucasus region.

The general public will, for the first time in history, be able to view the country’s oldest and rarest books including copies of medieval Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli’s epic “The Knight in the Panther's Skin”, with illustrations by Hungarian painter Mihaly Zichy; Georgia’s first printed book, a Georgian-Italian Dictionary published in Rome in 1629; and a 1709 book of psalms from Georgia’s first printing house.

The museum is a part of an on going restoration of the historic building housing the National Library. Constructed in 1913-1916 as the Bank of Nobility by architects Anatoly Kalgin of Russia and Poland’s Henryk Hryniewski in a Neo-Georgian Monastic style, the building will be restored to its original appearance lost during the Soviet era.

The museum will be built along international standards with a state-of-the-art ventilation system to protect the artifacts on display and a digitized database containing all of the library’s contents.

The project is sponsored by the David Bezhuashvili Education Fund and supported by the Georgian Industrial Group holding company.

Upon its completion, the museum will be the largest of its kind in the Caucasus region.

By Ana Akhalaia