The University Library was founded by Miklós Oláh, archbishop of Esztergom in 1561. Finally, it became the library of the university founded by Péter Pázmány archbishop of Esztergom in Nagyszombat in 1635. The Royal Hungarian University and the library were moved to Buda in 1777, then the library was moved to Pest in 1784. The library’s new building was built based on the plans of Antal Skalnitzky in 1876. The reading hall, which is over 200 m2 large, receives natural light through the glass roof, on its ceiling, there are frescos painted by Károly Lotz.
The Library’s collection consists of almost 2 million documents. The most valuable are: 189 codices, 14 of these are corvinas, approx. 1200 incunabula, plenty of valuable manuscripts, 11 000 16th century volumes, 16 500 baroque volumes, and 75 000 18th century volumes.
The workers of RNYO (was founded in 2000) created new collections by dividing documents by century. Currently, there are 7000 antiques, 11000 baroque-age and 45000 enlightenment-age publishment in the Library. We sterilized all the special valuable collection, the 16th and 17th century is clarified too. We have been renovating and repairing the 16th centuries old bookbindings (gothic and renaissance) for 4 years.
To search in the Library catalogue use our electronic catalagoue.
The basic (old) catalog is an alphabetical descriptive catalog, which is recommended if neither search in the online catalog nor search in public catalogs leads to results, and either the name of the author or the work are known. It also explores the literature of individual authors, but only in monographs. Does not contain analytical exploration (articles, studies) and is not suitable for thematic searches.
The catalog of the University Library is unique in the history of Hungarian libraries, and its present form was acquired in 1875. The traditional book-based catalogs were then revised to build a catalog on the labels. Link to the old catalogue.