On the 16^th of October, 2002, the New Library of Alexandria was inaugurated…A cultural landmark, the New Library of Alexandria was built to recapture the spirit of the Ancient Library, one of history’s most important beacons of culture and knowledge…

Within the walls of the Ancient Library, eastern and western scientific and cultural thinking intertwined… It was a model of ancient cultural globalization that produced the Hellenistic civilization… Here, civilizations and religions conversed; cultures and knowledge merged…

Scientists researched the legends and theories of their predecessors of Greek philosophers, as well as the visions of the Egyptian and Babylonian civilizations about the universe…

They were occupied with knowing the distance of the Sun from us, the distance between the Moon and us, which orbits around which, where the center of the universe is, what the boundaries of the universe are. They searched the sky for relations between the stars, their locations and movements; they gazed, meditated, reflected, and wondered…

From the sky of the Ancient Library, the scientific journey continued to explore the universe and our place in it; a journey to which Alexandrian, Arab, and Muslim scientists contributed, to be later followed by western scientists…

With the revival of the Library of Alexandria, the spirit of the Ancient Library is resurrected through the New Library’s activities, where scientists come together to study, think, and discuss… Nevertheless, the human conscience recalls the Library of Alexandria because of the Museon, where minds met and thoughts merged to bestow upon us this rich scientific and cultural heritage…

“Alexandria, the Cradle of Astronomy”, the first BA Planetarium Show Production, introduces us to the eminent scientists of the Ancient Library of Alexandria, who laid the foundations of Astronomy; the likes of Aristarchus of Samos, Eratosthenes, Apollonius, Hipparchus, Claudius Ptolemy, Theun the Alexandrian, and his daughter Hypatia, whose cruel death marked the end of a glorious era... An era that is now being resurrected at the New Library of Alexandria…

Join us on this enthralling journey through the past and into the future… Watch “Alexandria, the Cradle of Astronomy” soon at the BA Planetarium