Prague Diaries: Infinity and beyond
A never-ending tower in the Prague Municipal Library
In the Prague Municipal Library there is a sight for sore book lovers’ eyes. In the main entrance lobby, up a set of stairs, is an infinite tower of books. They’re piled in a circle with a gap so you can look inside. Do this and you can see books, books, and more books, going on forever. That’s appropriate given the work of art, as I suppose it is, is the Infinite Tower of Books, which has become one of Prague’s premier tourist attractions.
The regular tourism big hitters - the Charles Bridge, the Old Town Square, Hradcany Castle, they’re all still as congested as ever. The Charles Bridge looks like a mosh pit at a death metal concert. You may want to keep moving across it but everybody wants to stop, to take in the view, to give some money to the buskers and painters and street hawkers that take up the valuable real estate.
But it’s the library that has a queue out the door and round the corner in Prague. This despite temperatures below zero and the library not being open yet. Still, it is at least sunny when we take our places in the queue to see the Tower.
Libraries the world over would kill to get more people through their doors. With budgets being cut and footfall doing just that, falling, a line around the block is about as likely as a school trip to an undertakers. But not Prague’s Municipal Library. This must be the only library in the world to hire a security guard, to have that queue around the block while the doors are still locked. This must be the only library in the world that wishes people would just get lost, actually.
About that security guard: I’m not sure he’s a real security guard. Once we’re in the door - and that isn’t as easy as it sounds - we see him standing guard by the Tower. He’s less bothered about making sure people go up one at a time, that people get their allotted time with the art, and more bothered about stopping people coming up the side doors and just taking a photo.
Because this is the easy way out if you don’t want the shot poking your head in. Or if you’re so not actually bothered about it, if you’re just coming to see it because social media said you should come and see it, you can do this. Sneak in a side door and snap a quick photo, before the security spots you.
But don’t worry, he’s the least intimidating man in the building. I’ve seen scarier beetles. I’d bet my student loans he’s just a librarian who drew today’s short straw. He’s dressed in a t-shirt and jeans but has a lanyard that says ‘security’ on it to make him seem at least semi-official. This doesn’t really give him much authority though when all he seems to do is stand at the top of the stairs looking glum. He does occasionally show people that it’s not okay to take a photo from the side door by walking up to them and pointing at the door. The sting is taken out of this gesture - leave! - by the fact that since the people in question have already taken their photo they are leaving, they can’t get out of here fast enough. They’ve got their picture, mission accomplished.
These people might not get to experience the art, namely, to stick their head through the gap and confirm that, yup, there’s books all the way to infinity there, but they have seen the thing in about twenty seconds, an achievement we can only dream of. Since we start queueing before the library has opened its doors we have about 40 minutes to wait outside, and then another 20 as we slowly inch our way up the stairs, very very closely followed by the Italian family behind us.
Now I don’t know whether they are worried about their place in the queue, whether they are unaware of just how close they are standing to us, or whether they just want to make friends, but the result of their closeness is that it feels like I have an Italian, well, up my arse, for just over an hour. I’m curious to see what an infinite tower of books looks like, the man behind me seems far more curious about the state of my digestive system.
Thankfully he doesn’t follow me to the tower and we peer in and, yup, books to infinity. It’s definitely not two very well placed mirrors. It’s an infinite tower of books, okay? After all, why else would there be such a long line to see it?
I’m absolutely sure that’s because of the magic of the thing, and nothing to do with the fact that a couple of years ago, the tower appeared on TikTok. The tower was built in 1998 but before a couple of years ago had, like most libraries, only the odd visitor. Now pretty much every one of Prague’s tourists wants to see it.
This won’t turn into a rant about the TikTokification of travel. Sure it’s not ideal for the actual users of the Prague Municipal Library but I’d say of all the ways TikTok has affected how we are tourists, sending a few hundred people a day careering towards a library is by no means the worst. But I will make this point: how many people in the queue would be there had they not heard about the tower on TikTok? How many people, had it not been featured there, would have walked straight past?
There’s nothing wrong with people finding out about something they are genuinely interested in on TikTok and therefore visiting. But there’s something weird about the people who come to the tower because it was on TikTok. Because everyone else was going to see it, too.
Anyway, back to the most important question: how does it work?! Even the most dense among you (no, not you, don’t worry) know there simply aren’t enough books in the world to have an infinite tower of them. It can’t be done! Think of the forests!
To you I say just one word: mirrors.
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Taking pictures of books... okay, uh, why? And nobody reads a book, am I right? Dumb...
Mirrors! 🪞📚🪞