British Library

The British Library is the UK's national library and, with over 170 million items, one of the largest in the world - every book published in Britain enters by legal deposit. The monumental brick building on Euston Road next to St Pancras was completed in 1997 after 35 years of planning by Colin St John Wilson; Prince Charles famously called it an academy of the secret service at the groundbreaking. At its heart stands the six-storey glass-walled King's Library Tower holding George III's books. The free Treasures gallery displays two original Magna Cartas, the Lindisfarne Gospels, Beatles lyrics scribbled on napkins, and a Gutenberg Bible. The courtyard with Eduardo Paolozzi's Newton sculpture is a quiet pocket of London.