ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT - Over 2,000 years ago, descendents of Alexander the Great constructed a library that held more than 700,000 volumes of ancient books, called Bibliotheca Alexandrina. After standing for centuries, it had been destroyed by a fire.
Talks of re-building the library began in the 1970s, but no actions were consummated until the early 1990s. It was then that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization made it a major mission to recreate one of the largest research libraries in the world. After an intense architectural competition, Snohetta of Oslo, Norway, was chosen to design the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.