Livraria Lello

Yep.

But some of the things we didn't go to, there's a very famous bookstore in Porto called Livraria Lello, and some say it inspired, like, the Harry Potter design-

Yep

... that you see in the books and in the films, because it's become so popular that you do have to purchase a ticket, and then the value of your ticket you can redeem for select books when you go into the bookstore.

No, not at all.

According to our sources, the Manifesto Library is a permanent physical installation, and it is housed inside the historic Livraria Lello bookshop in Porto, Portugal.

Such an amazing location.

It officially opened on June 27th as part of a new literary festival called Babel City of Books, and the phrase Lipa uses to describe it is just striking.

It is battling a relentless, overwhelming tide of humanity.

We are traveling to Porto, Portugal to examine the magnificent and highly complicated Libreria Lello.

Oh, Libreria Lello.

It is visually intoxicating.

It first opened its doors in 1906, and the architecture is this breathtaking collision of neo-Gothic and Art Nouveau design.

It's a tough question.

The business is thriving financially, obviously, and the physical building is impeccably maintained, but the psychological sanctuary, the ability to linger and leave feeling altered, might be permanently lost to the crowds.

It is a delicate, precarious balance, and it leads us to ask, how else can a physical bookstore survive without succumbing to the mass market tourism that overtook Libreria Lello?