Standing on the garden rooftop of the Warsaw University Library (Biblioteka Uniwersytecka w Warszawie) feels like being at the center of the universe, or at least of Poland. From the perch, you can see the spire of the Palace of Culture and Science, the next-door Copernicus Science Centre, the basketlike PGE Narodowy stadium, and the banks of the Vistula River. Below, visible through large arching windows, it’s also easy to spot students sitting in the study rooms below, surrounded by stacks of books.

There’s an inherent appeal to library tourism—seeing the places where nations hold their collective knowledge and history. Warsaw University Library makes for a particularly rich stop. While this intellectual hub has only been standing at Dobra (“Good”) Street for 26 years, the library has been a long-standing symbol of the city’s fight for knowledge. Since its founding in 1816, it’s survived both World Wars, the November Uprising in 1830, and communism. At a time when, once again, books and knowledge are threatened, both in the US and abroad, it’s also a reminder of the wealth of knowledge that can be lost in the digital era.

The building strays dramatically from the Soviet-style block architecture that has defined so much of the city’s character. As librarian Lilianna Nalewajska explains, its exterior, featuring a candy-colored pink grate from the former library digs (a symbolic link between the past and the present), and a green façade with book-like engravings from Plato, Polish poet Jan Kochanowski, and other various classics, are tributes to what’s contained within. It’s particularly meaningful when you consider the construction date of the building in 1999, a mere eight years after the fall of communism, when many of those works were restricted from public access.

“The idea of the architects of this place, Marek Budzyński and Zbigniew Badowski, was that it should show that this is an important place for humanity,” Nalewajska says. “But here you will find text taken from different cultures, different attitudes. Visitors come through the books into the light.”

The building is fabricated from glass and steel, a minimalist construction, designed to make the most of light on short winter days. Large green beams arch across the glass ceiling, creating a metallic, forest-reminiscent canopy. In 2002, Poland’s Minister of Infrastructure bestowed the library with an award for its “outstanding digital qualities.”

As Nalewajska notes, the symbolism of the entrance extends throughout the entire building, particularly notable in the statues of Demosthenes and Sophocles, which stand on columns flanking the entryway.

“If you remember temples in ancient Rome, there are also several steps leading to some columns,” she says. “Behind the columns, there is the shrine and the temple. So, this is the meaning of the design, that we are leaving this commercial world of commerce, and we will be in the temple of knowledge. Communists strived to not remember these philosophers. They were meant to be forgotten. So, this is the way to honor them by putting them on a pedestal.”

In addition to symbolic thrones, there is also a physical throne, once occupied by Pope John Paul II. Six months before the library’s opening in December 1999, the Catholic leader, noted for his role in helping end communism in Poland, visited the building, issuing a special blessing. He called the building a “special temple of the creativity of the human spirit,” noting “a library is an institution which by its very existence bears witness to the development of culture.”

That egalitarian nature extends to the Warsaw University Library’s collection, which features books predominately in Polish and English. However, Nalewajska proudly notes that many other languages—Japanese, Spanish, German, and Latin—are represented in the collection, a treasure trove given the university’s international student population, currently hovering around 10 percent. (Another treasure: The library’s fleet of 200 Kindles—making it the only library in Europe to have so many e-readers at the ready.) Non-students are also able to use the library collections onsite by purchasing a card for 20 Polish złoty (about $5) that grants on-site access for a year.

Printed materials are only a part of what the facility has on offer. In an unexpected twist, the library features a small Japanese tea pavilion, constructed out of wood, bamboo, paper, clay, and stone. The second-floor room was a gift in 2004 from Kyoei Steel Company president, Akihiko Takashima. As Kazuko Takashima, the ex-consul-general of the Republic of Poland in Osaka, noted in a statement, the goal is to “make the students of the Japanese Studies Section, and all other persons interested in Japan, feel closer to traditional Japanese culture, and that it will make it more popular not only at Warsaw University, but in broader society circles.” (Think of it as a spiritual sequel to the sakura tree the company donated to the university in 1997.)

Of all the building’s charms, though, it’s the library’s rooftop garden that probably draws in the majority of the library’s 1 million annual visitors. Opened in June 2002, it almost instantly became a nature-rich “third place,” i.e. somewhere that isn’t home or work, and where spending money isn’t a requirement for entry. While the 21,000-square-foot-plus upper garden, located on the rooftop, is only open from the beginning of April until the end of October, the 161,460-square-foot lower gardens are open year-round, making it the perfect hang-out for those not averse to the cold. It’s long been a hit with locals, its lush design predating the emergence of ecofriendly architecture in the region.

The gardens’ continued popularity is unsurprising. The landscape, designed by the late agricultural architect Irena Bajerska, is a retro-futuristic dream. Upper and lower gardens are connected by a stream, solar panels, and concrete staircases—a bridge between the ground and the roof. It’s the largest rooftop garden in Poland, a tangle of large glass-domed windows protruding from the roof, greenery-covered structures, and trellises giving it a cinematic, retro-futuristic vibe.

With the irregular shape of the roof architecture, Bajerska’s concept was to feature four distinct gardens, with color-coded plants in gold (forsythias), silver (shrub cinquefoil, silver-leaved willows), carmine (red-leaf barberry), and blue (clematis Cassandra). Her vision—a play on wildflowers that was streamlined due to budget concerns—was simple: to create an area of beauty.

“The garden is 12 years old. It is a living organism that changes and evolves over time,” Bajerska told AssemblePapers in 2013. “Every garden on a rooftop has value for a central city. The beautiful landscape allows close contact to nature, including important visual and educational values. … Cities can be overcrowded spaces, lacking in nature, and devoid of understanding and embrace for natural history.”

It seems fitting that the Warsaw University Library garden functions as an accessible space to learn, grow, and appreciate the surrounding city. Like the wealth of knowledge contained just below our feet, it’s a tiny universe, ready to welcome anyone willing to show up.