Check This Out!

Ready to fall into a good book? Visitors to the Prague Municipal Library can get lost in a seemingly endless tunnel of them! The library in Czechia (formerly the Czech Republic) is home to a popular art exhibit—a colorful tower of about 8,000 books. 

When you peer into the tower’s teardrop opening, the titles seem to go on forever. That’s because mirrors at the top and the bottom create the illusion of a spinning tunnel that never ends.

Called Idiom, the dizzying display is the novel idea of Matej Krén, an artist from Slovakia. The artwork symbolizes the infinite knowledge that books provide.

Installed in 1998, the exhibit was a hidden gem for decades even though Prague, Czechia’s capital, draws more than 8 million visitors annually. But several years ago, the tower went viral on social media. Today it attracts long lines of tourists, with some waiting up to two hours to get a glimpse and snap a pic.

Managing queues, or lines, of sightseers is a new experience for the library staff. They recently set up a separate entrance for the exhibit and are debating whether to charge admission. 

“Working with tourist crowds is a completely different service from [what] we have provided up to now,” library spokesperson Lenka Hanzlikova told a reporter earlier this year. “Most readers laugh about it . . . but we have had people who wanted to return books and joined the queue.”

—Lisa M. Herrington