In the decade from 820, a separate, two-story library building was constructed—scriptorium below, book collection above—the first of its kind in Europe. (Preserved in the abbey library is the oldest extant plan of a monastery. Dating from the early decades of the ninth century, it shows a large, two-story library—a perfect cube—and seems to be a plan for the “ideal monastery,” of which only the library–scriptorium building was actually built.)
