World’s Coolest Bookstores

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A map of the world’s coolest bookstores.[/caption]

Just this past summer, I lived in New York City for a month. As a visitor with a shallow acquaintance with the city (my previous visits were restricted to Soho, Times Square, or the Empire State Building), I decided that I would count less on the Yelp reviews or Google Maps, and more on some serendipitous encounters while roaming around on foot.

One day, amidst one of my excursions around Union Square, it started to pour. Without an umbrella and more than fifteen blocks away from home, I scurried into the nearest sanctuary I could find, which happened to be Strand Bookstore just across the street. What was to be a makeshift shelter from the downpour turned into a two-hour long stay — browsing through the tall shelves for poetry collections I hadn’t seen anywhere else and observing bookworms who didn’t mind standing while perusing almost an entire book. I became one of them myself, and I’d never felt more at home after having paced through an unfamiliar city alone.

Running into bookstores in the middle of a bustling city, even if it isn’t for a rainstorm, is like finding a safe haven. Whether it be the snug, homely ambience that welcomes booklovers and induces a month’s worth of reading to be done all in one sitting, or the long history, throughout which the store has come to tell a story in itself, bookstores around the world featured on this list have a way of becoming a home to both natives and visitors alike.

At Libreria Acqua Alta in Venice, shelves are not the only place reserved for the old and new books of various languages that the bookstore carries. A sizeable gondola that extends through the center of the rather compact room is filled with piles of books and, throughout the interior of the store, mannequins, oars, sinks overflowing with paperbacks, ships’ wheels, and other artifacts remind you that you are in a city on water, but also in a store like none other in the world. Books at Libreria Acqua seem to be much more than just for reading and purchasing; frayed hardbacks of encyclopedias are piled in the main courtyard to form a staircase, which you follow to see a wonderful view overlooking the canal.

For avid travelers and wanderlusts, the Stanfords Bookshop in Covent Garden, London, may inspire their next trip or a map that may come handy for their adventures. The store features a variety of map and atlas collections, including the National Geographic map covering the ground floor and globes of all sizes that you will want to place in your study.

While some bookstores have retained a long history of attracting bibliophiles, many others have served different functions before transforming themselves into literary havens. Librarie Avant-Garde in Nanjing, China, now a bookstore and a public library, was once a 43,000-square-foot parking lot used as a bomb shelter.

El Ateneo in Buenos Aires was both a theater and a cinema before it became a books and music shop. Although what now occupy the second and third floors of the balconies are shelves packed with books instead of applauding audiences, gold-yellow lights tracing the walls, regal red curtains drooping along the wide stage, and the fresco painting decorating the dome above, together remind us that El Ateneo must have once been a venue for masterpieces.

We often make time to arrange tours around landmarks and historical sites on our voyages abroad, but we don’t often make the time to stroll around and take in the little, defining characteristics that make a place unique. There may be no better place than bookstores where one could find such quirks, where you witness the history of the city archived on the shelves, within the architecture, and through the ambience, where you may gather some inspiration both from paper and people, and of course, devour an entire book — or two.

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