Hundreds of thousands of old illuminations online

Last updated on 15 February 2025

Among the treasures that libraries around the world host and increasingly share online on the web are the beautiful illuminations. Too fragile to be consulted on site, the web makes it possible to make them shine again and offer them to everyone. The word illumination comes from the Latin verb illuminare (light, illuminate) which gave the French word "enluminer".

Light up, illuminate, here are three sites that offer thousands of beautiful online illuminations to illuminate your eyes at leisure.

Illuminations. The rich database of the Ministry of Cluture

A little sleepy and yet of incomparable richness the Base Enlightenment provides online access to illuminated medieval manuscripts kept in municipal libraries. The database lists more than 80,000 images, all of which can be consulted online. Enlightenment provides a digital reproduction and scientific description of the decoration of medieval manuscripts. You have several options to access the treasure room. You can consult the old illuminations by library, author or theme or escape by following one of the many guided tours.

Link: Illuminations

Mandragore. BNF’s online collection of antique illuminations

With Mandragore you have access to the fabulous shelves of the National Library of France. Mandragore allows the consultation of more than 100,000 records analyzing the decor of Western or Eastern manuscripts dating from the 6th to the 19th century. Each record contains a legend and also indicates the textual content of the manuscript, the place and date of production, and sometimes the name of the artist.

More than 80,000 of these records accompany a digitized image. At the bend of your walk, real treasures await you.

Link: Mandragore database

Leigh. Magnificent archival work of ancient illuminations proposed by the University of Philadelphia

A leap across the Atlantic to access one of the largest collections of illuminations in the world. It took three years of work to digitise 475 medieval manuscripts in high definition in about 15 US libraries in the state of Pennsylvania. The result is great. More than 150,000 pages are freely searchable on a simple browser. All documents are very easily accessible through a collection made available on the Internet Archive platform, many of these documents are in the public domain.

Link: Enlightenment database on the Internet Archive