that an excursion to San Lazzaro is a favourite one with all visitors to Venice," noted one visitor in 1905. Irish botanist Edith Blake wrote: "The garden in the centre of the cloisters was gay with flowers, and there was a calm, peaceful air of repose over the whole place." The monks at San Lazzaro make jam from the roses grown in the gardens. The jam, called Vartanush, is made from rose petal around May, when the roses are in full bloom. Besides rose petal, it contains white caster sugar, water, and lemon juice. Around five thousand jars of jam are made and sold in the gift shop in the island. Monks also eat it for breakfast. Collections Library The library contains 150,000 to 200,000 printed books in Armenian, as well as European and Oriental languages. Some 30,000 European books printed before 1800 are kept at the library. The entire collection includes books on the arts, the sciences, history, natural history, diverse classical texts, literary criticism, major encyclopedias and other reference books. The floor of the library is decorated in a Venetian style. Its ceiling, partially destroyed in the 1975 fire, was painted by Francesco Zugno and depicts Catherine of Alexandria, the four fathers of the Latin Church (Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, St. Gregory the Great), and fathers of the Armenian Church. A chalk sculpture of Napoleon II by Antonio Canova is preserved in a glass cabinet in the library. A sculpture of Pope Gregory XVI by Giuseppe De Fabris, presented to the Mekhitarists by the Pope himself, is also kept at the room. In 2021 the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative donated $50,000 to support the library in memory of Vartan Gregorian. Manuscripts The Mekhitarists regard the collection of manuscripts the greatest treasure of San Lazzaro. During the 19th century, Mekhitarist monks extracted from these manuscripts and published some previously unpublished pieces of Armenian and non-Armenian literature. According to the magazine of the Church of England, by 1870, San Lazzaro had the second largest collection of Armenian manuscripts after Etchmiadzin having some 1,200 manuscripts in possession. The exact current number of manuscripts preserved at San Lazzaro is unknown. According to Bernard Coulie the number is around 3,000, which comprises some 10% of all extant Armenian manuscripts. According to the Mekhitarist Congregation website the monastery contains 4,500 Armenian manuscripts. Armenian Weekly writer Levon Saryan noted that the manuscript collection of San Lazzaro consists