The Codices gallici (Cod.gall.) 1 - 982 form a collection of a little over 1,000 French-language manuscripts from the 14th to the 20th century, among them approximately 50 medieval manuscripts. Among the most famous items are the Munich Boccaccio (Cod.gall. 6) and the  Psalter of Queen Isabella of England (Cod.gall. 16) written in the French language and richly decorated with English book illuminations, the Prayer Book (Cod.gall. 40) crafted for Philipp the Good, Duke of Burgundy (1419 - 1467), and - to mention some modern-age examples - the 17th-century manuscript Cod.gall. 36 (De la Vau, Devices for the Adulation of King Louis XIV - private copy of the king) and the Penitents (Vie des saintes pénitentes) by J.-F. Bourgoing de Villefore dating form the beginning of the 18th century (Cod.gall. 982).

The shelving was carried out in a continuous sequence of shelf marks, according to a rough systematic categorisation on the basis of materials and sizes: the collection starts with the parchment manuscripts (Cod.gall 1 - 31 in the folio size, followed by the quarto and octavo sizes), followed from the shelf mark 51 onward by the paper manuscripts, again divided into sizes. The group of shelf marks Cod.gall. 528 to 545 and 556 to 574 is related to Bavaria, the volumes formerly bearing the shelf marks Cod.gall. 584 to 598 belong to the group of Codices iconographici (Cod.icon.) today. The collection of manuscripts in the French language from the library of the Orientalist Etienne Quatremère (1782 - 1857) was shelved en bloc bearing the shelf marks 621 to 830. Starting from Cod.gall. 831 further paper manuscripts are shelved, followed by all acquisitions since the late 19th century from the shelf mark 854 onward.

Extensive collections were acquired by the purchase of Quatremère's library, but also particularly from the Mannheim court library, from the Munich and Passau court libraries, from the handover from the Reichsarchiv (Cod.gall. 858 - 867) and the libraries von Moll (Cod.gall. 873 - 879), Montgelas, Petrus Victorius (i. a. Cod.gall. 55) and the monastery library of Polling (i. a. Cod.gall. 24, 61, 230 - 232, 258, 398).