After moving to Paris, I made it my aim to explore the city’s many stunning bibliothèques, like the gorgeous Bibliothèque Mazarine, a dream of a library if there ever was one, and eventually I made my way to the biggest library in the city: la Bibliothèque Nationale de France Site François-Mitterand, called “la Bibliothèque Mitterand” for short.

Like many of former French president François Mitterand’s architectural “Grand Travaux” — l’Opéra Bastille, the concrete jungle of La Défense — it is a horror.  The building is so awful, so completely unsuited to everything that has to do with books and the people who love them, that it is difficult to know where to start complaining.

I might as well begin with the physical approach to the building.  Set on the banks of the Seine in a modern, industrial section of the 13th arrondissement, an area that is so different from the rest of the city that it makes you wonder if you’re still in Paris, la Bibliothèque Mitterand is comprised of four giant glass towers set on a sunken platform, much like a table turned upside-down (architect Dominique Perrault meant the towers to resemble four open books, but to me it will always be an upended table — or the foreboding set of a Sci-Fi horror film).  The steps leading up to the building and the vast terrace that surrounds it are made of wood, a wood that is, unfortunately, very slippery when wet.

Folly #1: Slippery Stairs = Personal Injury.  Many a reader has broken a leg or an arm on the steps of the Mitterand Library. So many, in fact, that the wood had to be coated, post inauguration, in non-slip material that has now begun to wear off.  In spots, the stairs and the deck are still very slippery when wet.  Watch your step.

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