The seat of the Veszprém Archdiocese, the Veszprém episcopal palace was built between 1765-1776 according to the plans of Jakab Fellner, a notable representative of Hungarian late Baroque and Zopf architecture. The attitude and education of the builder, Ignác Nagymányai Koller (1762–1773) is illustrated by the fact that on the first floor of the northern wing, right next to his suite and the episcopal private chapel he established his library. The interior of the reading room: a fixed 18th-century shelf system with adjoining wooden wall panel and a collection consciously placed in size-groups shows the care the bishop took, his affection to the Baroque grandeur and his special aesthetic sense. Franz Anton Palko’s painting, depicting the pastor with a book in his hand, shows how much the founder loved books. The inventories and records make it obvious that the room was designed to house the books collected by Márton Biró and Ignác Koller, creating one of Veszprém’s first consciously structured private collection.
The private collection was first ordered professionally in the 1930’s when the Episcopal Library was catalogued. Then a reception hall was made for representations, so the volumes which were not enough aesthetic from this aspect were placed in the Episcopal Library and were substituted with other volumes of more beautiful bindings. The stock created this way consisted of altogether 2225 volumes. 708 books came from Ignác Koller, 58 from Márton Biró, 27 from József Bajzáth, 11 from Pál Rosos, 1 from József Kopácsy, the origins of the other 1420 volumes are unknown. The collection contains mainly 16-18th century works but there are a number of book serieses from the beginning of the 19th century.
During World War II the soviet military hospital quartered in the episcopal palace occupied the library room as well and during their stay the soldiers of the occupying army damaged many books. The archdiocese of Veszprém has repaired the damages in the last ten years, the damaged books have been restored, and the stock has been cleaned and sterilized.