The new library is a triumph — calm, lucid and flooded with light. It rises in four tiers, bumble-bee striped in grey and gold and clad in a lattice of interlocking aluminium rings. Larger black ones represent the city's manufacturing tradition, smaller silver ones its reputation for fine jewellery work.

It will hold 800,000 books, 3 million photographs and more than 20 miles of archive shelving. In the jargon of all modern libraries, it is to be a "multi-use space". There's a cafe and community garden, a sunken amphitheatre, a children's play area and internet hub spots.

Patrick Arends, an architect at Mecanoo, the Dutch designers, explains that they wanted to get away from the "traditional ‘Shhh' library". When I put it to him that some people might like "Shhh" libraries, he grudgingly pointed to quiet study areas away from the bustle of the central rotunda.

The one constant of the three Birmingham libraries has been the Shakespeare Memorial Room. This fine oak-panelled chamber in "Jacobethan" style opened inside the Free Library, was incorporated into the Central Library and has been painstakingly moved, one piece of stained glass at a time, into the golden tower of the new library. It is a jewel-box of a room.

Here, you can almost hear echo the words of George Dawson's inaugural address: "How little of the din of this stupid world enters into a library." He would have understood the virtues of a little "Shhh".