Biblioteca da Ajuda The Ajuda Library is one of the oldest in Portugal. The special nature and wealth of its collections characterise it as a heritage library whose mission is to conserve, study and make available its holdings of documents.
The Library has been housed in its own wing of the Ajuda Palace since 10 June 1880. The first three of the five rooms that make up the oldest area of the Library are open to the public. They stand out especially for their size, the height of the shelves and galleries, their furnishings, and the ceilings with frescoes which José Pereira Júnior painted using the trompe-l'oeil technique. Glass cabinets display a selection of documents comprising valuable manuscript and printed works, featuring examples of the Library’s holdings, and a set of 18th/19th centuries artefacts from the former binding workshop of the Royal Library.
The origins of the Ajuda Library go back to the 15th century when it was known as the Royal Library. Installed since the 16th (?) century in the western tower of the Ribeira Palace, its holdings were significantly augmented by King Dom João V. Most of its very rich collection was lost in the 1755 earthquake, following which it was moved to some houses attached to the wooden palace (known as the “Royal Shed”) in Ajuda.
To escape the threat of the invading French armies, in 1811 the Library was transferred to Brazil, near the Court in Rio de Janeiro, where it formed the initial kernel of what is today the National Library of Rio de Janeiro. In 1821, only the Royal Household manuscripts returned to Portugal, where they were later joined by libraries from the Company of Jesus (from the House of São Roque and the Santo Antão College) and those from the Congregation of the Oratorio and the Necessidades Palace.
The Library was administered directly by the Royal Household until the Proclamation of the Republic in 1910, and its librarians were appointed by the monarch, very often from among the latter’s secretaries – the case of Alexandre Herculano (1839-1877) – or confidants, like Magalhães Coutinho (1877-1895) and Ramalho Ortigão (1895-1911). The first Director appointed under the Republic was Jordão de Freitas (1918-1936).
Since 1910, the Ajuda Library came under the authority of a number of different departments of state with responsibility for Culture. In 2012, the Ajuda Library became a service of the Ajuda Palace which in turn is a dependent department of the Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage.
The Ajuda Library holds a very important collection of heritage assets. Three kilometres of shelves are home to around 150,000 manuscript and printed items, some of the most outstanding being unique, well known pieces, such as the Cancioneiro da Ajuda, the Livro de Traças de Carpintaria, and Francisco d’Holanda’s Da fabrica que falece a cidade de Lisboa.
The Collection of Manuscripts holds 2,512 codices and around 33,000 sundry documents (13th to 20th centuries), including 43 illuminated items, travel books and atlases, bibles, historical and literary miscellanies, and an important collection of chronicles (15th to 18th centuries), nobiliary lists and genealogies. The 226 codices of the Symmicta Lusitanica and the 61 codices of the Jesuits in Asia section are fundamental to the study of the history of the Orient (18th century).
The Collection of Musical Manuscripts is considered to be one of the most valuable in the country. It is made up of 2,950 codices and 10,200 sundry manuscripts, and at the international level is one of the most important collections of 18th and 19th century chamber and opera music.
The Collection of Printed Books comprises 16,000 monographs, 11,000 periodicals encompassing a total of 1,700 titles, and 60,000 volumes in the Old Books category, which ranges from the 16th to the 18th centuries. It includes an important collection of 190 incunabula, and a collection of rare books with around 500 titles, some of which are unique exemplars. We should also note the collection of Dutch, French and German atlases (16th to 18th centuries), and a collection of leaflets containing around 9,000 titles.
The Cartography, Iconography, and Photography Collections are each made up of about 2,500 items, and the photographic documentation from the 19th and early 20th centuries are particularly important.
