This city on the Warta is the regional and voivodeship capital and the see of the Poznań archdiocese. It is an important point on the Piast Trail.
Poznań was still contained within its medieval walls when it found itself inside the Prussian partition in 1795. The city became too cramped to accommodate the influx of Prussian soldiers and civil servants. The decision was therefore taken to pull down the walls and expand the city westward. Edward Raczyński purchased a site by a newly demarcated public square and had it designated for a public library building. The design was modelled on the eastern façade of the Louvre. New technical innovations were deployed to put up the edifice. The columns adorning the facade of the library were made of then fashionable cast iron and metallic sheets were installed in the ceilings dividing the individual floors as a safeguard against fire.
The library opened on 5 May1829. In accordance with the founder’s wishes, the collection was available to every resident of the city regardless of nationality or sex, the only caveat being that the director had to be Polish. Edward Raczyński and his wife Konstancja supplied the greater part of the book collection. There were both contemporary works and old prints and manuscripts that had been collected for years. These survived intact until WWII. All the books in the building were destroyed when it was burnt down in February 1945. The gutted building was rebuilt 1953-1956.
The Raczyński Library is now the longest running and one of the largest public libraries in the country. It has around 2 million titles, of which more than 200,000 belong to special collections. These consist of manuscripts, old prints and maps. Among the most valuable are the manuscript of the Code of 1460 with theological treatises by Augustinus Triumphus of Ancona, works by Stanisław Hozjusz from 1553 and Mikołaj Rej prints from 1568.
