The ASTRA County Library Sibiu (Biblioteca Județeană ASTRA Sibiu) is the principal public library of Sibiu County, with its historic headquarters in an ornate early-20th-century building facing Astra Park in Sibiu.
The library traces its origins to ASTRA, the Transylvanian Association for Romanian Literature and the Culture of the Romanian People, founded in Sibiu in 1861. Its early collections were built largely through donations, exchanges and the work of successive librarians, gradually creating one of the association’s most important cultural institutions. By the end of the 19th century, the growing library and ASTRA’s wider activities required a much larger home.
Construction of the present historic building, later known as the ASTRA Palace or Palace of the Association, began in 1903 to plans by architect Aladár Baranyai, with Gustav Maetz overseeing the work. Completed in December 1904 and inaugurated in August 1905, it was conceived as a broad cultural center rather than simply a library. The public library occupied the ground floor, while the upper level contained ASTRA’s Historical and Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania and a large conference hall that also became an important stage for Romanian-language theater in Transylvania. The museum opened here in 1905 and became the institutional predecessor of today’s ASTRA Museum.
The building itself remains one of the library’s main attractions. Its entrance is framed by two sculpted atlantes, while the interior includes the richly decorated ceremonial hall and a corridor lined with busts of Romanian cultural figures. The former ASTRA museum closed in 1950, but a newer Museum of the Association exhibition now presents objects, documents and other material connected with ASTRA’s history inside the historic building.
Today the library occupies two neighboring buildings. The historic headquarters at no. 5 is known as Corp A and still contains the main lending section, periodicals, reading rooms and several documentary collections, while the newer Corp B at no. 7 accommodates additional library departments and modern reading spaces.
