NATIONAL LIBRARY

Ex El-Attarine Barracks : Souk El Attarine

Hammoudi Pasha Bey was particularle interested in military buildings and barracks ; he built the outside city walls and five barracks inside the Medina, one of which was the El Attarine Barrracks, built in 1814.
At the installation of the Protectorate (1881), the garrisons left and the colonial administration installed the Antiquities Department and the General Library. The General Library, reorganised and enriched by thousands of Arabic books and manuscripts from the Great Mosque and the medersas of the Medina has since become the National Library.
Its ground plan is that of a barracks and resembles houses, foundouks or medersas in that its living areas are grouped round an inside courtyard. This one is oblong and surrounded by galleries opening on to vast rooms. Some still have the plaques denoting the company of Janissaries quartered there.