There’s a certain kind of travel that starts not with a flight map or a bucket-list beach, but with a building full of books. These aren’t typical souvenir stops or hurried detours. They’re places that people build entire itineraries around, flying across oceans and rerouting road trips just to spend an afternoon inside them.
What makes a bookstore worth the airfare? Architecture helps. History matters even more. Some of these places have drawn over a million visitors a year, required ticketed entry to manage the crowds, or been officially recognized as the most beautiful on the planet. That’s not marketing. That’s something real.
1. El Ateneo Grand Splendid – Buenos Aires, Argentina
Built by architects Peró and Torres Armengol, El Ateneo Grand Splendid first opened as an opulent theater in 1919, particularly famous for its tango performances. Ten years later, it was converted into a cinema, and in 2000, the theater was in danger of demolition before it was purchased, refurbished, and reopened as a bookstore, with the beautiful original opera boxes and ceiling frescoes intact.
In 2019, it was named the “world’s most beautiful bookstore” by National Geographic. Following refurbishment works, the 2,000 square meter El Ateneo Grand Splendid became the group’s flagship store, and in 2007 sold over 700,000 books; over a million people walk through its doors annually.
The former stage, once the haunt of tango stars, is now the bookstore’s café, and live music still floods the air thanks to a lineup of players performing there. Some 3,000 people visit the bookstore every day. Since January 2026, visitors also have the chance to buy a ticket for the “Grand Splendid Experience,” an immersive experience to discover the history and transformation of this iconic building.
Buenos Aires has 25 bookstores for every 100,000 inhabitants, making it the city with more bookstores per capita than any other in the world. Hong Kong takes second place with 22 shops per 100,000, followed by Madrid and then London.
2. Livraria Lello – Porto, Portugal
Livraria Lello was established in 1881 by two brothers, José and António Lello. In 1906, they commissioned engineer Francisco Xavier Esteves to design their new bookstore at Rua das Carmelitas. The result was a Neo-Gothic building with Art Nouveau elements that quickly became recognized as one of the most beautiful bookstores globally.
Its curvaceous wooden staircase spirals upwards towards a stained glass ceiling featuring the bookstore’s motto, “Decus in Labore” (Dignity in Work). Beyond this focal point are rows upon rows of books arranged on ornate wooden shelves reaching up towards high ceilings adorned with intricate plasterwork designs.
Livraria Lello has been called the world’s most beautiful bookstore, and its Neo-Gothic exterior façade and interior winding wooden staircase draw more than 1 million visitors a year, making it one of the most popular tourist destinations in Porto, Portugal’s second-largest city.
Livraria Lello gained international fame when rumors circulated that J.K. Rowling drew inspiration from this enchanting bookstore while writing the Harry Potter series. Rowling lived in Porto teaching English in the early 1990s, and she was known to frequent Livraria Lello. A timed entry ticket-voucher is required to enter. The Silver ticket costs €10 and is fully redeemable against any book purchase, making it effectively free if you buy something.
3. Boekhandel Dominicanen – Maastricht, Netherlands
Named the most beautiful bookstore in the world in 2025 by more than 200,000 readers in the 1000 Libraries Global Competition, Boekhandel Dominicanen sits inside a 13th-century Dominican church in the center of Maastricht. The church was consecrated in 1294, seized by Napoleon’s army in 1794, and spent the next two centuries serving as everything from a warehouse to a snake house, car showroom, boxing arena, and bicycle shed. In 2006, Dutch architects Merkx + Girod transformed it into a bookstore, winning the Lensvelt Award for Interior Architecture.
A towering black steel bookcase rises through the church’s vaulted nave, reaching toward ceilings still covered with 17th-century frescoes. The oldest painting here, a 14th-century depiction of Thomas Aquinas, is also the oldest surviving ecclesiastical wall painting in the Netherlands.
The store offers a wide range of books, including English titles, as well as a music section with CDs and vinyl records. It also has a café, where cultural events like readings and live music performances take place. Entry is free.
4. Shakespeare and Company – Paris, France
The original Shakespeare and Company opened on Paris’s Left Bank in 1919 under American bookseller Sylvia Beach. It quickly became a gathering place for writers like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound, and in 1922 Beach famously published James Joyce’s Ulysses when no one else would. The store closed in 1941 during the German occupation of Paris.
American bookseller George Whitman opened an English-language shop nearby in 1951, originally called Le Mistral. In 1964 he renamed it Shakespeare and Company in tribute to Sylvia Beach. The current store sits at 37 Rue de la Bûcherie, in a 17th-century building directly across from Notre-Dame.
Shakespeare and Company on Paris’s Left Bank came in second place in the 1000 Libraries 2025 global ranking of the world’s most beautiful bookstores. On top of its broad range of English-language books, the shop hosts literary events and even has a café that partners with local businesses for baked goods and coffee.
5. Powell’s City of Books – Portland, Oregon, USA
Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon, occupies a full city block between NW 10th and 11th Avenues and between W. Burnside and NW Couch Streets; it contains over 68,000 square feet of retail floor space, with an inventory for retail and online sales of over four million new, used, rare, and out-of-print books.
Located in downtown Portland’s Pearl District, the City of Books has nine color-coded rooms and over 3,500 different sections, offering something for every interest, including an incredible selection of out-of-print and hard-to-find titles. Dozens of acclaimed writers, artists, and thinkers visit each month to read in the Basil Hallward Gallery, and a one-of-a-kind Rare Book Room draws bibliophiles from near and far to browse an impressive collection of autographed first editions and other collectible volumes.
Powell’s buys around 3,000 used books daily, allowing for a constantly evolving collection and a treasure trove of unique finds. In 2024, Powell’s reported that its rare book room was drawing record crowds, especially after reopening post-pandemic. The store hosts hundreds of author readings each year, turning it into a vibrant community hub.
Michael joined Walter in Portland in 1979, creating a bookstore with a unique recipe: used and new, hardcover and paperback, all on the same shelf, open 365 days a year, and staffed by knowledgeable booklovers. Four decades later, Powell’s Books is a cornerstone of the community and continues to operate as a third-generation family-owned business.
What These Five Bookstores Have in Common
None of these places became destinations by accident. Each one carries a history that extends well beyond bookselling, whether it’s a tango theater in Buenos Aires, a Gothic church in the Netherlands, or a former car dealership in Portland that quietly became the world’s largest independent bookstore.
They also share something harder to quantify. Crowds. Timed tickets. Café lines. The fact that people plan entire trips around them. That’s a kind of cultural gravity that most museums would envy.
Physical bookstores, especially independent ones, have faced real pressure from e-commerce and digital reading for decades. These five prove that when a bookstore offers something a screen simply cannot replicate, people show up. They show up by the millions.
Practical Notes Before You Visit
Some of these bookstores require advance tickets because the lines are that long. Livraria Lello in Porto and El Ateneo in Buenos Aires both experience peak crowds during holiday months and summer, so timing your visit mid-week or early in the morning tends to make a meaningful difference. Boekhandel Dominicanen remains free to enter, which is a pleasant surprise given its status as the most-voted most beautiful bookstore in the world as of 2025.
Powell’s is open every single day of the year and provides a printed map to navigate its nine color-coded rooms. Shakespeare and Company is closed on Sundays and tends to get busy on weekends, especially now that Notre-Dame has fully reopened and foot traffic in the surrounding neighborhood has surged again.
The Larger Point
A bookstore can be just a bookstore. Most are. These five are something else: places where architecture, literary history, and the simple act of browsing books fuse into an experience that sticks with you long after you’ve left. They’re the kind of stops that make you rethink what a travel destination actually is.
Not every trip needs a famous monument or a famous meal at its center. Sometimes all it takes is an old theater full of books, a floating barge on a canal, or a cathedral-turned-library to remind you why travel matters in the first place.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.