The 10 Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World

With more bookstores per capita than almost anywhere in the world, Buenos Aires is a literary powerhouse with picturesque book nooks like  Eterna Cadencia and  Librería de Ávila, the oldest in the Argentine capital. However, nowhere is more reverence shown for the written word with greater drama than at  El Ateneo Grand Splendid, the city’s most famous literary landmark. It occupies a former theater on Avenida Santa Fe that first opened in 1919. The frescoed ceiling still arches overhead, and original balconies curve around the space, though they now carry shelves instead of spectators. A deep red curtain continues to frame the former stage, where a café now stands. Be sure to head to the upper balconies for the best view of the space where daring performances once unfolded.

There are few bookstores in the world that require advance planning, timed entry, and a tolerance for crowds before you’ve even seen a single spine. Opened in 1906 in Porto,  Livraria Lello is one of Portugal’s oldest bookstores, and it is regularly cited as one of the most beautiful in the world. Housed in a neo-Gothic, Art Nouveau building, it is a dazzler of an edifice with carved wood, intricate plasterwork, and a luminous stained-glass ceiling that glows overhead like a secular chapel. The bookstore’s modern fame is largely due to persistent rumors that it inspired Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling. Visiting Livraria Lello is rewarding for the aesthetics, but a place for leisurely browsing, this is not. Expect crowds and queues, and be sure to  get your ticket well in advance. The price goes towards any books bought in-store.

Opened in 2015 in Bucharest’s Lipscani district, Cărturești Carusel occupies a building with a past as layered as its shelves. Built in 1903 for the influential Chrissoveloni banking family, it was later nationalized under the Communist regime and eventually abandoned as communism collapsed. After three decades of legal battles, the original owner’s grandson finally reclaimed the decaying structure in 2007. What followed was an ambitious restoration involving more than 20,000 hours of labor, transforming it into what is now known as the “Carousel of Light.” Designed to be both a bookstore and a gathering place, it is popular, photogenic, and often busy with book lovers milling about the four luminous white floors curved around a central atrium.

When Venetian bookseller Luigi Frizzo leased his current space in 2002, he was warned that the property lay in a flood-prone zone near Piazza San Marco. Rather than retreat, he leaned in, naming the shop after the seasonal high tide that regularly seeps into Venice’s lowest quarters. Libreria Acqua Alta offers an eclectic mix of Venetian history, art books, novels, comics, and rare secondhand editions. To protect hundreds of thousands of volumes, including rare and out-of-print works, Frizzo devised an improvised flood-defense system: books stored in bathtubs, waterproof bins, and even full-sized gondolas. The now-famous staircase built from books began as a pragmatic solution for storage. Today, it doubles as one of Venice’s most photographed vantage points.

Formerly known as Selexyz Dominicanen, Boekhandel Dominicanen occupies a 13th-century Gothic church whose religious function ended more than two centuries ago. Since then, the building has lived several lives, serving variously as a bicycle shed, a storage space, and even a carnival venue, before reopening in 2006 as a bookstore. The transformation was led by Dutch architects  Merkx + Girod, who preserved the integrity of the church’s soaring vaults and frescoed ceilings by inserting a two-story black steel bookcase along one side of the nave. Books now rise where hymns once did, and there’s a wide selection of Dutch and English-language new and second-hand titles. The store is centrally located in Maastricht’s Binnenstad and open daily.

Directly opposite Notre-Dame at 37 rue de la Bûcherie, stands Shakespeare and Company, a bookstore in a 17th-century former monastery. American expat George Whitman opened it in 1951 as a place for Anglophone literary life in Paris to take root. Over the decades, it did exactly that, welcoming writers from Allen Ginsberg to James Baldwin and Julio Cortázar. Originally called Le Mistral, the shop was renamed Shakespeare and Company in 1964 to deliberately invoke the memory of the original Shakespeare and Company that was founded in 1919 by Sylvia Beach on rue de l’Odéon. The store hosts literary events and festivals, and uniquely, runs a Tumbleweeding program whereby writers can apply to live, write, and read on the premises for up to a month while assisting with events.

For nearly two decades, Atlantis Books occupied a cave-like space in Oia, carved into the cliffside. It might have moved from its original perch, but it’s still a sight for sore eyes in Santorini’s northern village of Firostefani. Founded in 2004 by American philosophy student Craig Walzer and a small circle of friends, the bookstore began almost accidentally, sparked by a ferry ride from Piraeus, too much wine, and the realization that Santorini offered little in the literary department. Walk its white walls to uncover new and pre-loved books in English, Greek, Spanish, Italian, and more.

Designed by Klein Dytham Architecture, the Daikanyama T-Site complex in Tokyo consists of three low-rise buildings arranged around a quiet garden. Its most striking feature is the latticed white façade, formed from hundreds of interlocking “T” shapes that subtly reference the logo of the Tsutaya books and media enterprise. Inside, the selection is vast, with books in multiple languages, niche titles, and an exceptional range of magazines, including rare international periodicals from the 1960s and 1970s. Music and film sit comfortably alongside literature, with CDs, vinyl, and even DVDs (remember those). With lounges, cafes, and even a convenience store, you are at liberty to enjoy the daily 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. opening hours without feeling hurried.

Lisbon’s LX Factory, a former industrial zone wedged between the city center and Belém, has been reimagined as a cultural enclave of studios, cafés, and independent shops. Ler Devagar occupies a vast former printing warehouse there, with the machinery of mass production left intact. The bookstore was founded in 1999 in the Bairro Alto neighborhood and relocated to LX Factory in 2009. It functions simultaneously as a bookstore, café, exhibition space, and cultural venue, hosting debates, talks, and installations alongside its carefully curated collection. Ler Devagar means “read slowly,” and bookish folks have upwards of 40,000 titles to peruse. Books climb the walls across four levels, rising toward a ceiling some fourteen meters high. At the center of it all hangs the bookstore’s most iconic feature, an art installation of a white bicycle suspended improbably in midair.

Foyles Charing Cross Road stands in the former home of prestigious London art and design college Central Saint Martins. This purpose-designed flagship was created in collaboration with architects Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, and its specialist departments, housing more than 200,000 titles, are organized around a central, skylit atrium. You can take the stairs or use the lifts to traverse this concrete neighborhood of books loved by all ages. Children gather for weekly story times on Sundays, aspiring adventurers find travel books on level four, famished readers linger over coffee and pastries at the fifth-floor cafe, and authors regularly take the stage at the auditorium on the sixth floor. Foyles Charing Cross Road is a welcoming world of a place, grand without being intimidating.