Leather bookbindings, pigments for paints and majolica (white-glazed pottery) all came from the East, although the Venetians never succeeded in imitating the perfect ruby glaze of Iznik pottery.

ECONOMIST: Venice and the East

Voices travel up from the ground floor in a smokestack effect and ricochet around the preserved glazed-white brick walls. (The "new" library prefers buzz over the code of silence of the old library.) How different from the older sections of the library where, for instance, one reading room has restored its carved plaster ceiling reproducing Michelangelo's Laurentian Library in Florence.

WSJ: The Library's Future Is Not an Open Book | By Julie V. Iovine | Public Library Renovation