Access to Catalogs and Collections

Library and Collection Funds are accessible through links, which can be found clearly in the table below. Below the table, there are explanatory notes on each database and portal. Please consult these sources before visiting the study room. If you are unsuccessful, we will be happy to advise you on how to find a book or collection item.

Catalog of the Strahov Library from 1756
Catalog of the Strahov Library from 1756

Links to the Collections of the Strahov Monastery

Information for Users on Databases

The entire collection of the Strahov Library can be accessed through the electronic Tritius Catalogue. Records of manuscripts, early prints, and incunabula were initially taken from an old card catalogue of manuscripts, created in the first quarter of the 20th century. As a result, their quality may not meet current library cataloguing standards. We are gradually working to improve them—for instance, the incunabula collection has already been fully catalogued according to the latest standards. Contemporary literature is also catalogued in the standard way. Access to digitized documents is available directly from each record, and more advanced tools can also be used to search among the digital copies.

A significant portion of the manuscript collection has been digitized: all medieval manuscripts, the most frequently consulted early modern manuscripts (such as monastery annals), and systematically, the entire DA shelfmark series and the beginning of DB. This successful digitization effort has been made possible thanks to support from the VISK6 programme of the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic; in 2024, 18 more manuscripts were digitized with VISK6 support. These digitized materials can be found under the link “Digitized Manuscripts, Atlases, and Czech-language Uniques before 1800.”

As part of the project Digitization of the Manuscripts of Jan Kryštof Bořek I (Call No. 0241/2022, Digitization of Cultural Assets and National Cultural Monuments I, under the National Recovery Plan – Digitalization of the Cultural and Creative Sector; programme guaranteed by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Department of Museums and Galleries, Project Reg. No. 0342000004), the first part of the administrative-economic collection of the mercantilist Jan Kryštof Bořek (1665–ca. 1729) was digitized in 2024. The link to the full collection is provided above (Manuscripts of Jan Kryštof Bořek). The second part of the collection is being digitized this year with support from the Ministry of Culture (Call No. 0442/2025, Digitization of Cultural Assets and National Cultural Monuments III, under the National Recovery Plan – Digitalization of the Cultural and Creative Sector; Project Reg. No. 044000009). You can view the first digitized volume here.

Digitized foreign-language prints (mainly in German and Latin) published in Bohemia and Moravia can be found under the link “Digitized Early Prints.” The geographical richness of the monastery’s collections—including atlases, maps, and the collection of globes—is accessible either via “Digitized Maps” in the Tritius system or through the links: “Digitized Maps,” “Digitized Globes,” and “Digitized Manuscripts, Atlases, and Czech-language Uniques before 1800.”

Digitized items from the art and applied arts collections are available under “Digitized Art and Applied Arts Collections.” The link “Digitized Prints and Drawings” does not yet include the full collection. A complete internal database of prints and drawings exists, and searches are handled upon request by an assigned staff member. Historical photographs of the Strahov Monastery can be found under “Historical Photographs.” However, the monastery also holds historical photographs from other locations and a collection of portrait photographs.

The complete charter collection from the historical Strahov archive has been digitized (“Digitized Charters from the Strahov Monastery Archive”). A scanned inventory from the Vademecum database of the National Archive is also available (“Digitized Inventory of the Historical Archive”). The music archive was inventoried by experts from the National Museum before 1990, and the scanned card catalogue is available at the corresponding link.

Among external databases, we also offer access to a database of Strahov Premonstratensians from the 17th–19th centuries, which is part of ongoing projects of the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences focusing on early modern religious institutions in Bohemia and Moravia.

Galerie

The catalog of the Strahov Library from 1756
Map of London depicting the city fire in 1666
Portrait of the Prague Archbishop Franz Ferdinand von Khünburg according to Petr Brandl, mezzotint by Johann Kenckel, after 1700
The signature of Abbot Vít Seipel in the Liber Provincialis, around 1710.