The Berlin State Library's priceless treasures

Soon, people will once again be able to browse to their heart's content in the spacious reading room, which architect HG Merz designed in a bright orange color. The institution is a historical research and reference library, with little of the holdings digitized. So, if you want to do research, you have to physically visit the site.

This was how it looked nearly 100 years ago. At that time, the tables in the domed reading room were arranged in a ring, which is rather unusual for a library. In 1941, the heart of the Stabi was almost completely destroyed in a bombing raid.

The hands of the large reading room clock point to 10:25 pm. This was the time another bombing occurred in 1944. The framing of the clock actually survived the war and the clearing out of the reading room ruins; it was unearthed from the rubble and ashes. Here, Barbara Schneider-Kempf, director general of Berlin's public library, stands next to the clock.

The library houses a total of seven reading rooms. The motifs from "Alice in Wonderland" on this globe clearly show what the area of focus is here: this part of the collection includes some 200,000 volumes of children's and young people's books, some dating back to the 17th century.

Among the institution's greatest treasures are the original scores of Ludwig van Beethoven's "9th Symphony." This is a copy, as photographing the original could have damaged it. The building also houses 80 percent of the manuscripts of Johann Sebastian Bach and famous operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, such as "The Magic Flute."

The renovation of the Stabi took almost 15 years, longer even than that of Berlin's notorious BER airport. It's no wonder that the estimated costs also skyrocketed — by more than 100 million to € 470 million euros ($572 million).