Diogo Ramada Curto
1796
The Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (BNP) is the Portuguese national library, the biggest Portuguese library, and the guardian of Portuguese bibliographic heritage, fulfilling the functions of legal deposit and copyright.
The library was created by Decree of 29 February 1796, as the Royal Public Library of the Court.
The library’s objective was to allow the public access to the court’s collections, thus bucking the trend of the time only available to scholars and sages could access the treasures, manuscripts, paintings, and books of the royal court.
Nowadays, the two main objectives of Nacional Portuguese Library are to link the library to the most innovative information systems and to put BNP on par with similar international institutions, continuing to serve readers, researchers and the general public.
Achieving these two objectives and doing everything we can to further internationalise our institution, remaining as a reference in the broader context of Portuguese culture, is our mission.
On 1 July, the Portuguese State acquired at auction a rare collection of autograph documents by some of Portugal’s most important writers, which will now become part of the collections of the National Library of Portugal (BNP). This acquisition is particularly significant both for the documentary value of the materials and for the way in which they complement and enrich the collections already held by the institution.
