It is Tuesday, 1:45 pm. The final preparations are made, everyone goes to his or her station. And then the last minutes pass by in silent tension. The entrance door opens at 2 pm sharp and crowds of visitors stream out of the midday heat into the pleasantly cool building. Staircases fill up and for a moment the sudden bustle reminds you of an anthill. People young and old, couples and families push their way in and secure the best seats. This scene would not sound unusual if this was a pop concert. But we are in a library!

Once the initial restlessness has died down after 20 minutes, and the silence that is so typical for libraries has set in, almost all the workstations are occupied. Visitors roam between the rows of shelves with more than 220,000 library books, people read in seating areas and older people sit at large tables, studying current daily newspapers from around the world and international magazines. Roberto from Rome has made himself comfortable in one of the armchairs. The man in his mid-fifties is in Bologna to visit his son, who is studying at the university here. For someone like Roberto, who once worked as a librarian himself, an afternoon in the Salaborsa is part of every visit, "because of the special atmosphere", as he says. "The library concept works really well and I think it's great that visitors to the city like me can be here to read and enjoy the special atmosphere too".