The Vasconcelos library, completed in 2006 by the architect Alberto Kalach, is a 38,000-square-metre space in which steel-and-glass bookshelves appear to hang in the air. The reading rooms are stacked vertically and lit by skylights; you walk through a forest of suspended stacks holding nearly half a million volumes. A grey whale skeleton by the artist Gabriel Orozco floats over the central atrium.
The library was technically incomplete for years after its opening — a leaking roof closed it from 2007 to 2008 — and there is still a slight whiff of public-works boondoggle about the place, but the building is unforgettable. It sits next to Buenavista bus and suburban-train station in the north of the city centre. Entry is free.