Washington DC is such an amazing place. You can spend weeks there just visiting museums. Last time we visited there it was the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s historic speech. We didn’t realise until later that day otherwise we would have been with the masses. This time it was only a couple of months after the 50th anniversary of the historic landing on the moon. Visiting a place twice means we get to see different things. Visiting a place twice gives me two chances to get lost there, but it’s actually really hard to get lost in Washington.

One of our visits this time was to the Library of Congress. We got there in plenty of time to join the official tour. It was amazing. The tour guide went into quite some detail about the artwork and I was fascinated. She was kind enough to friend me with her public Facebook account so I can ask more questions when I need. But today I’m going to show you images of the Gutenberg Bible. I sort of got waylaid looking at it and taking rubbish photos of it. You’re saved, I deleted all the rubbish photos and am only showing you some of the good ones.

The Gutenberg Bible is displayed in a climate controlled display case. A relatively new display case, I found this article from last year about it.

This, slightly out of focus, photo is a close up. We could only see one page but it was absolutely beautiful.

And then there’s this photo of the left side of the book. You can see two little indentations which appear to show damage. The book would have been closed with straps. This is where the straps would have been fastened.

This image shows the right of the book and you can easily see the straps that would have fitted into the left of the book. The book would have been securely closed.

Do you like the condition of this book? It’s pretty awesome considering it’s well over 500 years old. If I looked this good when I’m over 500 years old it’d be a miracle.

I did want to enter the Reading Room, but you can only do that if you have a Library of Congress Card. I was totally distracted by a number of things and never got to the point of getting a Library of Congress Card. The cost didn’t worry me as it’s free. There is so much to do and I was totally distracted.