Bust of the Mazarin cardinal carved by Lerambert towards 1664-1669

Cardinal Mazarin's own library was opened to the learned public in 1643, hence becoming France's first public library.      A learned physician, Naudé, famed author of a treatise entitled Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque (1627), took on the task of setting up Mazarin's own library thus making it the most important privately owned and run library in Europe : by 1652 it contained close to 40 000 items. For the sake of posterity, Mazarin decided that his library would become part of the future Collège to be founded according to his will dated 6 March 1661.

    During the French Revolution, due to its public nature and the strong commitment of its librarian, Abbé Gaspard Michel better known as Leblond, the Bibliothèque Mazarine was the happy recipient of the items confiscated for political reasons from monasteries or from the Émigrés. Since then, the library has not ceased to expand through the acquisition of recent publications, through the legal requirements of registration of copyright (Dépôt légal) and important donations.

    The Bibliothèque Mazarine, which in 1945 was joined to the Institut de France, located since 1805 in the Collège des Quatre-Nations, is dependent on the French Ministry of Education. The Bibliothèque Mazarine's reading room, restored between 1968 and 1974, recreates the surroundings of an important XVIIth century library and, over three hundred and fifty years after its foundation, remains an institution accessible to all, to the merely curious or the learned, nationals and foreigners.