Phrontisterion - Mona Library

Phrontisterion, David Walsh's long‑imagined "thinkery," is now open at Mona, a library unlike anything else in Australia.

Housing Walsh's eclectic collection of nonfiction, novels, rare books, maps, autographs and curios, Phrontisterion reflects a lifetime of obsessive reading. As Walsh says, "My first library card was the great leveller."

Named after Aristophanes' satirical "think‑shop," the library invites visitors to explore everything from ancient brewing and winter rituals to Antarctic exploration, science fiction, sex, casinos, charcuterie and Mona's own collection.

Highlights include rare books such as a Shakespeare First Folio, Newton's Opticks, Darwin's Origin of Species, and signed works or handwritten documents by Eco, Ballard, Thompson, Bowie, Whitman, Flaubert, Einstein, Newton, Marconi, Cromwell and Alexander Graham Bell.

Phrontisterion uses a groundbreaking system that lets books live anywhere – no Dewey Decimal, no fixed order – yet remains fully searchable. It contains a new digital reader technology which allows access to a library with no fixed order that stays completely navigable. The only one of it's kind, they believe.

The space includes a map room, study, lounge, a cave‑like children's library (complete with illusions and curios), and artworks by Joshua Yeldham, Lucas Grogan, Rachel Marks, Ben Jakober and Yannick Vu, Matthew Barney, Julian Charrière, and bespoke metalwork by Pete Mattila.

Connected to Mona by sandstone tunnels, Phrontisterion sits beneath the inverted ziggurat of Anselm Kiefer's Elektra, a fitting home for a library built for curiosity, wonder and intellectual mischief.

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Phrontisterion