‘World’s most beautiful’ fairytale library in historic monastery inspired Disney tale

This monastery is centuries old and steeped in history – but one of its newest-built sections is drawing throngs of tourists due to its connections to Disney

Its gilded shelves are said to have inspired one of Disney’s best-loved classics.

This library could give Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel a run for its money with its beauty – and won’t require a two-hour wait in the Vatican’s queues either.

Admont Abbey in Austria is said to be home to one of the world’s most stunning libraries, where walking from shelf to shelf feels like wandering through a fairy-tale.

Founded almost a thousand years ago in 1074, the monastery near Hallstatt is still inhabited by around 20-30 monks today.

‘Admont’ means “at the mountains”, referring to the gorgeous surroundings. But it’s not the Alpine scenery which has visitors agasp here.

So dazzling are the monastery’s 13-metre-high Baroque-style shelves, it’s said to have been the inspiration behind the castle library in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

The 1991 animation features scenes in the Beast’s enormous library of white and gold shelves mirror those in Admont, and thousands of tomes for avid bookworm Belle.

Built in 1776 by architect Joseph Hueber, the library’s floor-to-ceiling shelves are across two floors and even have a balcony all the way around, adding to its fairy-tale charm.

The Abbey’s magnificent corridors have also been featured in photographic project Accidentally Wes Anderson , which compiles photographs of surreal and colourful architecture and locations from around the world.

But at 70-metres long and 14-meteres wide, Admont is also the world’s biggest monastery library too.

Its heaving shelves hold 70,000 volumes and hundreds of manuscripts – some of which date back to the eighth century.

It also contains 900 ‘incunulubae’, which are books and pamphlets pre-dating the 1500s in the very earliest stages of printing in Europe. The works are highly protected, as greasy fingers and exposure would likely cause irreparable damage.

Pictures from inside Admont show off its ornate décor where the frescoed ceilings portray the seven stages of human understanding, such as thought and speech, science and art.

Artist Bartolomeo Altamonte is said to have spent two years finishing the paintings.

It’s not just the library which pulls in crowds of 80,000 every year – the monastery also has a museum of ‘curiosities’ which include crystals, taxidermy and over 250,000 insect specimens.

Apparently the museum has one of the largest collections of flies in Europe – make of that what you will.

But while Belle’s library remains its primary tourist attraction, its shelves are cordoned off with the general public banned from touching the books. And there are certainly no bean bags to pull up, either.

So if you’re wanting to curl up in a pretty spot and read à la Roald Dahl’s Mathilda – think again.