It has folders marked ‘Grasping the victim’s head’ and now – after a £15m revamp and some help from Albert Einstein and the patron saint of the internet – the extraordinary Warburg Institute is letting passersby in to view its ‘books emanating sorcery’
Occult? Try upstairs! Inside the world’s weirdest library, now open to the public
A mysterious cosmic emblem hangs over the entrance to a building in Bloomsbury, at the heart of London’s university quarter. Depicting concentric circles bound by intertwined arcs, it represents the four elements, seasons and temperaments, as mapped out by Isidore of Seville, a sixth-century bishop and scholar of the ancient world, as well as patron saint of the internet. What lies within is not a masonic lodge, though, or the HQ of the Magic Circle, but the home of one of most important and unusual collections of visual, scientific and occult material in the world. Long off-limits to passersby, the Warburg Institute has now been reborn, after a £14.5m transformation, with a mission to be more public than ever.
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