Top Ten Tuesday

8 Famous Bookstores Around The World I’d Love To Visit (& 2 I Have Visited)

20221004 8 Famous Bookstores Around The World I'd Love To Visit (& 2 I Have Visited)

Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Hi everybody, and welcome to a new Top Ten Tuesday! Today we’re talking about famous bookstores! Don’t we all love a good, atmospheric bookstore to browse books and just get lost in? I’ve been lucky in that I’ve already been able to visit 2 famous bookstores, but then there also still many, many more I’d still love to visit. So in this post I’m focusing on 8 famous bookstores around the world I’d love to visit (& 2 I have visited):

**2 Famous Bookstores I Visited**

Shakespeare and Company, Paris, France

I visited this bookstore earlier this year during a visit to Paris and it was just as messily cozy as I’d imagined. Also, there was a cat roaming around the bookstore, which was just a bonus!

Selexyz Dominicanen, Maastricht, The Netherlands

A bookstore set in a 13-th century church, The Dominicanen bookstore was amazing! There’s also a little cafe in the back so you can browse books and just bask in the awesomeness while having a nice coffee or tea.

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**8 Famous Bookstores I’d Still Love to Visit**

The Strand, New York City, USA

18 miles of books? As a European, I have no idea how much that is exactly, but it sounds amazing nonetheless.

El Ateneo Grand Splendid, Buenos Aires

Set in an old theater, this bookstore still has the original opera boxes and ceiling frescos and it looks enchanting!

Libreria Acqua Alta, Venice, Italy

I really, really want to visit Venice one day, and this floating bookstore is one of the places I’d love to see for myself.

Atlantis Books, Oía, Santorini, Greece

A bookstore with a view of the Aegean Sea? Yes, please!

Livraria Lello, Porto, Portugal

This bookstore is one of the most famous and beautiful in the world and is known for its gorgeous red double helix staircase. Though I’ve heard they charge three euros to get in, I’d gladly pay that price just to see the beauty for myself one day.

Honesty Bookshop, Hay-on-Wye, Wales

Hay_on_Wye_Bookshop

This is just one bookshop set in a whole bookish town, so really, I’d just love to visit the whole of Hay-on-Wye, but I do love the idea of an unmanned outdoor bookstore that simply has a box for you to drop your payment. Honesty, indeed!

Book and Bed, Tokyo, Japan

Book and Bed is a bookstore-themed hostel in Tokyo, meaning you can sleep in bunks between the books. How amazing does that sound?

Coex Mall Starfield Library, Seoul, South Korea

Located inside the COEX shopping mall, the Starfield Library is most known for its 13-meter high bookshelf.

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Tell Me:
Have you visited any of these famous bookstores?
Which ones are on your to-do list?

Lindsey xoxo

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38 Comments

  1. I really don’t know anything about famous bookstores nor do I really have a realistic expectation of visiting those that are. Still… it’s fun to see what stores are considered famous, and who knows! Maybe someday I will see one or two. 🙂

    1. It is fun to dream about it, indeed! Maybe someday we’ll get to visit a few of these!

  2. Great list – I’m seeing some in common with other lists – we should all pool our pennies and go since there’s obviously a few favorites! 🙂 I’d love to travel the world and just hop bookstore to library to bookstore to ….
    Have a great week and hope you find time to enjoy a good book.
    Terrie @ Bookshelf Journeys
    https://www.bookshelfjourneys.com/post/ttt-bookstores-to-visit

    1. Ooh, a book blogger world tour around all these awesome bookstores would be so awesome! Though I may need to save up a bit for that haha 🙂 Hope we’ll both get to visit a lot of these some day!

  3. Book & Bed looks awesome. I’ve visited De Dominicanen a few times when we were in Maastricht. And we have the other bookstore in a church in a city nearby so I go there a lot too.

    1. De Dominicanen is awesome to visit indeed. And how cool that there’s another bookstore in a church, I’d love to visit that one too!

  4. Book and Bed sounds awesome! I’d love to spend a long weekend in Hay-on-Wye exploring bookshops too.
    My TTT

    1. Me too! Hope we’ll both get to do that one day:)

  5. A great list! I have a couple of those on mine. I wanted to add Book and Bed, but my list was already too long!

    Have a great week!

    Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog
    My post:
    https://budgettalesblog.wordpress.com/2022/10/04/top-ten-tuesday-favourite-bookstores-or-bookstores-id-love-to-visit/

    1. Thanks! I guess it’s amazing that there are so many awesome bookstores out there!

      1. Yes! And I want to visit them all! Totally unrealistic of course – I will be lucky to visit even the UK ones on my list!

  6. Omg, so many gorgeous bookstores! 😍 I’ve had the Maastricht and Buenos Aires bookstores on my bucket list already but now I’m adding all these others cos they all sound amazing. So far, I’ve only been to The Strand and it was so great!

    1. It’s cool that you got to go to The Strand! Hope you’ll get to visit all the other ones some day too 🙂

  7. masterspj says:

    I have a few of these on my bucket list! Someday I’ll have the time and money to travel to all of these places.

    Pam @ Read! Bake! Create!
    https://readbakecreate.com/nine-favorite-fictional-bookstores-libraries/

    1. Same! Someday, I hope we’ll get to visit all of these!

    1. Hope we’ll get to some day!

  8. These pictures are amazing! I have actually never been to The Strand despite going to NYC many times – I need to make it a priority!

    1. If you end up visiting The Strand, I hope you’ll do a blog post on it so we can share the experience like that 🙂

  9. Wow! I can see why you want to visit them. You’re making me want to do the same.

    1. I hope we’ll both get to visit all of these some day 🙂

  10. I’ve not visited any, despite having been to a few of the places that they’re in (New York, Santorini, Paris, The Netherlands-though admittedly, both times I’ve been there, it’s been to Amsterdam, not Maastricht). They all look amazing though and there are several that I included in a list bookshops I wanted to visited that I did a few years back.
    My TTT: https://jjbookblog.wordpress.com/2022/10/04/top-ten-tuesday-388/

    1. I hope you’ll get to visit these some day then! 🙂

      1. 🙂

  11. Sophie @BewareOfTheReader says:

    Sadly I haven’t 😉

    1. I hope you’ll get to visit some day! 🙂

  12. That one with the water running through it is stressing me out! But some beautiful spaces.

    Here’s my list for this week: https://speedyreadercom.wordpress.com/2022/10/04/top-10/

    1. Haha yeah, I get that 😀 But it’s beautiful indeed.

  13. So many great spots. I want to visit the Paris one. I had a friend who wrote a story about someone who studied in Paris and they used this store as a hang out spot.

    As many times as I’ve been to NY, I’ve never been to The Strand.

    Thanks for sharing.

    https://thebookconnectionccm.blogspot.com/2022/10/top-ten-tuesday-top-ten-places-where-i.html

    1. That’s so cool about the bookstore in Paris being used in your friend’s story! I hope you’ll get to visit it IRL some day (as well as The Strand) 🙂

  14. I love that you shared Instagram posts so that we could see the amazing pictures of these places and you didn’t have to worry about copyright infringement. Genius! 😀 Some of those places are gorgeous!

    1. Thanks! These stores really do look gorgeous <3

  15. Nice list! I’ve been to The Strand and Shakespeare and Company. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to actually go inside Shakespeare and Company because of COVID restrictions that made for crazy long lines just to get inside. I was willing to wait, but my family wasn’t. Bummer.

    Happy TTT!

    Susan
    http://www.blogginboutbooks.com

    1. Aww, I’m sorry to hear you didn’t get to go inside, that’s indeed such a bummer!

  16. The photo of the bookstore in The Netherlands made my jaw drop! Wow. I’d love to see that in person!

    1. I thought it was really impressive indeed. I hope you’ll get to see it in person one day!

  17. Shakespeare and Company is one I’d definitely love to visit some day.

    1. I hope you’ll get to visit one day!

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