The Book of Kells, now digitized and available online

Chester Beatty is a gem. I went into it not expecting much from "museum of books". But it's also in a way a museum of world's religions, which are tightly connected to writing and books. As an atheist who has low opinion on value of religion because of all the deaths they were and still are responsible for, it reminded me of their positive role in history. When you see all those ancient religious books you begin to question whether we would have writing at all without them? Who would go through a painstaking process of duplicating books before Gutenberg if not men devoting their lives to God? Thus carrying light of civilization and creating basis and tools for science to progress later. I know this is not some great revelation, but I felt enlightened a bit after leaving Chester Beatty.

Agreed! We went last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. I understand that the Long Room in the Old Library is mostly empty for renovations, but the Book has been moved to a dedicated building during this time.

Pro-tip to any potential visitors: they turn the pages every so often, and I have heard some travel bloggers complain that the pages on display when they went weren't very interesting, but the university will show you what pages of the book of Kells are currently on display: https://www.visittrinity.ie/book-of-kells-pages-on-display/

At the moment, it appears that they have it open to a pair of canon tables which have some really lovely illuminations.

They have some gorgeous Asian exhibits as well from what I remember.

The Chester Beatty Library has a much larger collection than is shown at any one time. Many sacred texts, but also much else, including some printed news-sheets from the French Revolution. And a lot of Chinese and Japanese stuff, including some gorgeous jade snuffboxes.

There's also a pretty decent eatery!

Another amazing library, though one that you can't really access, is the Edward Worth library at Dr Steevens’ Hospital, beside Heuston train station.

https://edwardworthlibrary.ie/

He had collected the books over his lifetime and bequeathed the collection to the hospital, under conditions that were to result in the absolute protection of the books. The story of the collection's history is itself worth the visit, and the current librarians are always welcoming if you call in advance. I was at a lecture there last week, and they took great pains to tell everybody to come back.

I saw it in person few months ago, and well......it's weird. The quality of the caligraphy and drawings is such that when you see it in person...it's completely underwhelming. It just looks like a very high quality print - which obviously speaks volumes about the quality of penmanship of something that is so crazy old. But the presentation room where the pages were shown magnified and the library afterwards were(to me) 100x more interesting than the "main event". I just saw it, went "huh" and that was about it. I guess seeing Mona Lisa in person must be similar - hundreds of people trying to take a peek, and it's far away from you behind glass so you can't really appreciate the details.

I stayed at a dorm on campus for a week at Trinity, but the book was so popular I couldn’t bring myself to wait in the long line to see it… but wish I had.

Strongly agreed. This is likely more obvious, but I think it's worth saying: the "Treasury" in the Kildare Street building of the National Museum of Ireland should also be at the top of any visitor's list. The Ardagh Chalice and friends are more or less the equal and equivalent of the Book of Kells in metalwork. https://www.museum.ie/en-ie/collections-research/collection/... .

I live in Dublin and never heard of this. Must do it ASAP.

Now, how many HN’ers are here in Dublin? We might want to start a group on Meetup.com.

Speaking of things that are gorgeous and well worth a visit I can also strongly recommend Iona - one of the places where the Book of Kells may have been produced.

A bit out of the way and the weather isn't always perfect but on a nice day I think Iona is one of the most beautiful places in the world - and that's before considering it's remarkable history and religious significance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iona

+1 for Chester Beatty. It is such a gem of a museum

That studio is amazingly good. The Breadwinner is harrowing but fantastic.

Contrary to everyone I think it was pretty mediocre. The significance of the book is barely covered and the contents of it are not mentioned at all. The story itself is dancing around the “message of the book” and how it prevails over everything (see the allegory with the abbey’s wall) but somehow they just never say it’s the four Gospels of the New Testament which are the most important texts of Christianity. If you don’t know what the Book of Kells _really is_ then what’s left from the film itself? Not so much just a generic fantasy story.

Agreed. Really unique and beautifully done.

guy or girl*

I watched it for the first time a few hours ago, and did a Wikipedia dive about the Book of Kells. Flip over to HN and see this thread; what a weird convergence.

One thing I like about The Secret of Kells is some of a meta-joke: since the plot takes place in the Middle Ages, and perspective was not yet in fashion, there's no perspective at all in this movie. It's very in your face (just like the Wes Anderson's lateral tracking shots), but just as charming.

All three movies in the trilogy are absolute masterpieces.

Ireland is an interesting land. It’s easy to believe in magic after living here among the fairies and the little people for a couple years. They host the best parties.

I once had a class in a room just off the old library. I had to go into the Long Room and step over a rope at the end. Very cool.

First name checks out :)

I promised a coworker up north a bit in Meath that one day I’d come visit him and got that chance about seven years ago. Along the way we did the tourist in Dublin thing and part of it was the trinity long room and book of kells. Amusingly, a cabbie was asking me what I loved about Dublin and I said the history. He asked what in specific and I told him that there is probably chewing gum on the ground older than the founding of the United States. He got super offended and told me they clean the streets in Ireland, but then I mentioned the Aran Islands, Newgrange, and the Drombeg Stone Circle… What is “old” in Ireland is 3000-5000 years old. What is “old” in the USA is a few hundred years old at best.

Such a lovely place and people.

Unfortunately, they recently removed most of the books from that hall due to conservation efforts. I didn't really give the feel or atmosphere of an old library.

I also did the same thing. I probably visited 30 times in the 5 years I was there. The postgraduate study room next door to it (disc shaped building between the old library and the front gate) is probably one of the neatest student spaces in the university, closely followed by the geography building behind it.

We had a big poster of the Long Room in the Harvard Law Library. (Employee, not student.) Gorgeous. Always looked at it walking past.

My only experience with the Book of Kells that age was working in an absolutely disgusting nightclub named after it. I was rather surprised to see how beautiful its namesake book was

... and be forced to complete a captcha before getting 503 service unavailable.

"The requested URL was rejected. Please consult with your administrator. Error 503 - Service Unavailable"

the indignity of the entire experience is comedic, and we've come to accept it. the op article is empty aggregation, a little superficial bit of dopamine noise, that's exclusively parasitizing on actual content. the direct link is probably better, but it throws a CAPCHA for me, where I need to click on Indian men on motorcycles to teach an AI what a motorcycle is. sister comment is reporting that the underlying site is down anyway, despite the "protection" provided by the internet muscle services.

which makes one wonder, why even go looking at the book of kells, like, who among the hackernews readership will sit down with an iPad or other high resolution device to peruse the entirety of the book at leisure, inspecting the subtle details of the illumination, taking notes etc.

better yet, direct to the pdf - https://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/pdf/false/eng/2/url/hm50tr...

Glad you said this as it saved me checking my memory.

I first came across the Book of Kells over 20 years ago and I swear photos/scans were available online of some pages even back then (one of the 'Xp' at least). But certainly thought it had already been made available online before (albeit in one of those annoying interfaces where it's all tiles to try and stop you downloading any of it).

> The pages, originally captured in 1990, “have recently been rescanned,” Trinity College Library writes, using state-of-the-art imaging technology. These new digital images offer the most accurate high-resolution images to date, providing an experience second only to viewing the book in person.”

anyone have a link? I couldn't find a good quality photo

I only see one cookie, for the captcha, and removing that just forces me to solve the captcha again.

The 503 error itself doesn't seem to be cookie related, looks like the site can't keep up with the kind of traffic they're getting.

Also, if clearing cookies prevents errors, it's likely related to caching. Depending on the server configuration, things like authentication cookies will cause the session to bypass caches for certain resources.

How does it still look so modern and pristine then?

the og scan of book of kells was done by a Swiss publisher in the early 90s. since you can't copyright a scan, and the book itself is in public domain, anyone can then take the scans (if they can get hands on the high dpi originals or whatever, or do a high dpi scan of the reproduction) and publish them as whatever they want. "the complete encyclopedia of human knowledge (only $99.99 if you call now)" "the illuminated authoritative book of kells (comes with your own one of a kind handmade Irish cross)" etc. you can get the scans themselves (afaiu its at matching dpi, if not the same format) from a 2006 trinity college dvd of book of kells.

the op is an announcement of the completed rescan effort, with modern technologies and modern dpis. with a companion iPad app and a website that have consumer grade renditions of those modern research grade scans.

No knowledge on irish law, but the photo itself has copyright separate from the thing photographed

I think they're alot like adding raw sewage to the soup at the salad bar, so that people don't steal soup. It probably works, and the most important thing about soup is that no one steals it. You wouldn't steal a medieval manuscript would you? It belongs to the world as a cultural treasure, but it doesn't belong to anyone IN the world.