Thanks to its high historical and artistic value, the Lello bookshop is considered as one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world by the Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas, the British newspaper Guardian and the Australian publishing house Lonely Planet.

The Library 'Lello e Irmão' was founded in 1869 and inaugurated in 1906; the structure of the library was conceived by the engineer Francisco Xavier Esteves with a mixture of Gothic tradition and Liberty elaborations.
Of the more than 1,000 visitors per day, 70% are tourists and 50% buy a guide or a book. The best-selling Portuguese authors are Fernando Pessoa and Nobel Prize winner José Saramago but also the English writer J. K. Rowling, who was a regular visitor to the library, where she found inspiration to set her Harry Potter.


Lello bookcase

R. das Carmelitas 144, 4050-161 Porto, Portugal