The County library

The county library building is built in neo – classical style and dates from the past century.

The tradition of the book and lecture for the public in old in Satu Mare. Petru Bran founds in 1962-1869 “The lecture society”.

The library, he says, is for the young book lovers what the field is for the bees. Ioane Marcu (1871-1887), Dariu Pop (1887-1963) make lecture circles at the schools. It is known a “lecture circle of the little artisans” (1892). In the inter - war period there was a library functioning at the “White house”.

The actual library was founded at the 1^st of February 1951 and it was named the District Library Satu Mare with the residence on Horea street nr 7. From 1974 it will be transformed in the County Library with the residence on Decebal Street nr. 2.

In this period the library's collections evolved from 3421 volumes at the end of the year 1951 to 320.000 volumes at the end of the year 1997.

This number comprises also the current collections, and the special bibliophile collections of over 70.000 volumes, from which five incunabulum (Aristophan – Comoediae,Veneţia, 1498, Hesiod – Theogonia, Veneţia, 1495; Cicero – Comentarii ad questionem Tusculanum, Veneţia, 1499; Cicero – De officiis, Veneţia, 1500) 1673 printings from the 18^th century, 430 manuscripts, over 200 foreign and Romanian periodicals beginning with the 19^th century.
Here there is a rich found of Hungarian book (from the founds of the protestant high school Satu Mare, The Piarist High school from Carei, the library Emerich Teleki from Satulung), French and German books.