Home of Durham University Museum of Archaeology and Cosin’s Library.
The Palace Green Library is more than where visitors purchase tickets for Durham Castle Tour, go to the toilet or a place for us to dry off! It should be your first stop, welcoming you to Durham and I couldn’t of asked for better guides who greeted you with smile and charm of Northumbria.
We popped our bags in the £1 lockers and dried our coats off on the hangers provided. Whilst they dried we went around the Museum of Archaeology.
The Museum of Archaeology is small but the perfect size for my children to enjoy and even better we had the whole place to ourselves!
The children were given activity sheets to complete as they went around and when they handed them back received a sticker. Everyone loves a sticker!
Inside the Place Green Library is the Cosin’s Library. You are guided downstairs where you follow the scent of knowledge and are welcomed into a calm space full of books!
Bishop John Cosin was an innovator having completed renovations in Durham Castle he saw an opportunity and commissioned local master mason John Langstaffe, a local Quaker, to build a new library.
Open and spacious, a different feel than any Library around at the time, encouraging scholars to mix and freely exchange ideas. Cosin Library definitely inspires learning. The built-in bookcases line the walls surmounted by portraits of famous theologians, philosophers, historians and classical authors.
Painted by Jan Baptist van Eersel, an otherwise unknown painter from the Low Countries, the portraits informed scholars of the books on the shelves beneath an index before its time.
You can visit the Palace Green Library for free!
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Find out more by clicking on the link below
Historic Libraries at Palace Green – Durham University
