With over 222,000 volumes, 40% of them periodicals, the EFR Library is the biggest French research library in the world.  

It occupies three floors at the Palazzo Farnese: the 2nd floor, the “mezzanine”, and the 3rd floor.
It has 220 reading places, and 180,000 volumes that can be freely accessed, And approximately 2,000 periodicals.
30,000 volumes stored in the basement are available upon request.

The EFR has developed its collections since it was founded in 1873.

Its principal areas of interest are:

• Archaeology of the Central Mediterranean region
• History of Roman civilisation
• History of Italy
• History of the Church

The acquisitions policy is defined as one of the School’s primary missions:

The École française de Rome develops, in Rome and Italy, and in the countries of Southeast Europe bordering the Adriatic Sea, research programmes in the fields of archaeology, history, and other human and social sciences, from Prehistoric times to the present.
 (Article 3, II -Décret No. 2011-164 of February 10, 2011 on French Schools Abroad (NOR: ESRS1014943D).

A documentary charter, sanctioned by the Scientific Council of the École française de Rome, defines the overall development policy applied to the Library’s collections.

The  CollEx label (“Collections d'excellence”) has been attributed for a period of five years (2018-2022) to the Roman Antiquity and History of Italy collections.

In 1989, the Library considerably increased the size of its collections in the field of history thanks to the Edoardo Volterra legacy, which consists in 10,000 books (including a collection of ancient volumes), and 16,000 separate titles.