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Manuscripts & Rare Books

With more than 900 illuminated manuscripts (ranging in date from 300 BC to the 19th century), 1,250 of the earliest printed books (ca. 1455-1500), and an important collection of post-1500 deluxe editions, this extraordinary collection chronicles the art of the book from antiquity to modern times. 

From Ethiopia to England, Paris to Persia, Byzantium to Bohemia, the illuminated manuscript collection provides a comprehensive view of manuscript production and decoration throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with highlights that include a manuscript used by St. Francis, epic tales enjoyed by Mughal emperors, letters of Catharine the Great, and Napoleon’s diary. Many of these manuscripts are religious in nature; in addition to Bibles, antiphonals, and other liturgical books, the Walters possesses one of the finest collections of medieval illuminated Books of Hours in the world.

The early printed book collection highlights the experimental nature of the first attempts at printing. Changes from one edition to the next sought to correct mistakes and perfect the printing process. These books – some illuminated by hand – are as unique as the manuscripts. The collection includes important first printed editions of ancient texts by great thinkers such as Aristotle and Euclid.

Working with the museum's conservation division, scientists, and textual scholars, manuscript curators are conserving, imaging, and studying the Archimedes palimpsest – an astonishing manuscript lent to the museum by a private collector that conceals beneath an 13th-century prayerbook the texts of two treatises by Archimedes that were thought to be lost until now.