The Austrian National Library, the heir to the former Habsburg Imperial Library, holds almost eight million documents.

It acquired its present name in 1920, after the end of the Empire. It is located in the Hofburg in Vienna, and some of its holdings are in the Mollard-Clary Palace. It contains valuable collections: papyri, manuscripts, incunabula, old books, maps, musical scores, autographs, engravings, spheres, globes and globes of the earth and sky, etc. It brings together the great wealth accumulated by the House of Habsburg since medieval times, although the Imperial Library, the direct predecessor of the present-day library, began to function in the 16th century under Maximilian II. It also has an important collection of more than 35,000 books in and about Esperanto and other languages. Within the institution there is a museum on papyri, another on globes, and a third on Esperanto.

The baroque building was designed by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and erected between 1723 and 1726 under the direction of his son Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach.