Ningbo - Tianyi Ge Library

The Tianyi Ge Library, in the west of the old town, was built by the high-ranking official Fan Qing between 1561 and 1566 in order to house his private library, which is one of the oldest of its kind in China. In front of the two-story wooden building an artificial pond was laid, which was intended to provide water in the event of a fire. Originally the library collection consisted of 70,000 Chinese volumes, and despite occasional losses it has been cared for and preserved its glory. Today the library boasts a collection of over 80,000 books, incunabula, old manuscripts and a large number of inscriptions in stone dating from the 14th-19th C.