Tasmania's $100M Underground Library Opens With 30,000 Books

After 10 years of planning and more than $100 million, Tasmania's Museum of Old and New Art has opened a spectacular underground library that throws out the rulebook on how books should be organized.

Phrontisterion houses 30,000 books in subterranean rooms beneath Hobart, including rare treasures most people only dream of seeing. The crown jewel is a Shakespeare First Folio from 1623, which librarian Mary Lijnzaad calls the "number one love" of her life.

Visitors can explore signed first editions from authors like Vladimir Nabokov, Umberto Eco, and Hunter S Thompson. The collection also includes handwritten documents by David Bowie, Walt Whitman, Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and Alexander Graham Bell.

But what makes Phrontisterion truly special is how it reimagines what a library can be. Museum founder David Walsh gave his team one firm instruction: no Dewey Decimal system, the traditional method libraries use to organize books numerically.

Instead, the library uses innovative technology with "live bays" featuring moving neon lights that highlight connections between books. Librarians act as curators, arranging books based on relationships and themes rather than rigid categories.

The tech allows books to move anywhere while still tracking their exact location. Visitors can view physical books alongside stunning digital doubles that bring rare texts to life in new ways.

The Ripple Effect: Walsh's vision stems from his childhood spent devouring books at Glenorchy library in northern Hobart, where he was allowed six books at a time instead of the usual two. One book from the State Library of Tasmania changed everything: Richard Epstein's Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic helped Walsh understand risk, leading to the gambling fortune that now funds the museum and library.

Now visitors can browse the collection, study in reading rooms, or simply wander through rooms where books spin on wheels and an "ammonite vending machine" displays fossils. While books can't leave the library, the space invites people to think freely about what they read and how ideas connect.

"This is a place to come and be free in what you look at, how you think about it, and what you want to think about it," Lijnzaad said. Free from typical public library constraints, Phrontisterion creates what Walsh calls "a rabbit hole of associations" where knowledge, learning, and artistry intertwine.

A boy who once tried to read every book in a two-room library has built a $100 million treasure trove where others can fall in love with books too.