Manchester's Historic Libraries: Where to Go for a Treat After Your Visit

Manchester Central Library stands on St Peter's Square in Manchester city centre. King George V opened it in 1934, and architect E. Vincent Harris gave it a grand Portland stone portico with six columns and a round design often compared to the Pantheon in Rome. At the opening, the King called it the largest library in the country provided by a local authority.

Head up to the Great Hall reading room, which seats up to 300 readers beneath a glass oculus and a ring of Art Deco lights. Look up to read the quote from Proverbs that runs around the dome, and try out its whispering gallery effect. The library is also home to the Henry Watson Music Library, a Children's Library, and archives for family and local history.

The John Rylands Research Institute and Library on Deansgate was founded by Enriqueta Rylands in memory of her husband John, and opened on 1 January 1900. Designed by Basil Champneys, the red sandstone building is Grade I listed and described as one of the finest examples of neo-Gothic architecture in Europe. Its Historic Reading Room, with a rib-vaulted ceiling and panelled reading alcoves, feels more like a church than a library.

The collections hold over 6 million items, from rare books printed by Gutenberg and Caxton to over 1,000 cuneiform tablets and the largest Aldine collection in the world. In the Rylands Gallery you can see the St John Fragment, and you can explore the Crawford and Spencer Rooms and the grand main staircase. Entry is free, and photography without flash is welcome.

Chetham's Library was founded in 1653 and is the oldest public library in the English-speaking world. It is housed in a sandstone building dating from 1421, first built for the priests of Manchester's Collegiate Church, and was made possible by the merchant Humphrey Chetham. Its collection of early printed books, manuscripts, prints and glass lantern slides is recognised as being of national and international importance.

In 1845 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels worked together at the wooden desk in the window alcove of the Reading Room, and you can still see it today. Guided tours take you past gated book presses holding 16th-century volumes, a chained library and medieval features. Visits are by pre-booked guided tour from Monday to Saturday, so reserve your place on the library's website.

The Portico Library on Mosley Street was founded in 1806, in a Grade II* listed building designed by Thomas Harrison of Chester with a front of giant Ionic columns. Peter Mark Roget, who wrote the first English thesaurus, was its first Secretary, and John Dalton and Elizabeth Gaskell were members. Thomas De Quincey even mentions it in his Confessions of an English Opium Eater.

Upstairs, the reading room is topped by a glass dome with stained-glass panels added in 1856. The library holds over 25,000 mostly 19th-century books, many of them first editions, covering travel, science, poetry, history and maps. Its free public exhibitions and bookshop are open to all, and it has run the Portico Prize for northern writing since 1985.

The Working Class Movement Library in Salford tells 200 years of working class history. It began in the 1950s as the personal collection of trade unionists Eddie and Ruth Frow, which filled their home in Stretford before moving to Jubilee House in 1987. Jubilee House itself was built to mark Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee as a home for District Nurses, and was designed by Henry Lord.

The collection includes over 100 political banners, more than 500 items on Chartism, rare Spanish Civil War posters and records of the Society of Journeymen Brushmakers, founded in 1747. The library is free and open to everyone, and you can drop in to see its displays. The reading room, once the nurses' dining room, is open by appointment, and the library sits opposite the University of Salford.

Manchester Poetry Library opened at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2021 as the first public poetry library in the North West, and it is the only poetry library in the UK supported by a university. It sits in MMU's Arts and Humanities building, on the site of a former Singer sewing machine factory, alongside the Manchester Writing School. The collection focuses on poetry in English from around the world, from the late 19th century to today.

It holds more than 10,000 poetry books and recordings, including a recording of Robert Browning from 1889, plus curated poetry in Arabic, Chinese, Polish, Spanish, French, Urdu and more. It is free to join and open to all, and members can borrow books. The library is on the ground floor with level access, so it is easy to drop in, browse and listen.