Booked for Life

At Livraria Lello, you queue like a clubgoer, gasp like a tourist, and leave like a reader

- By SHEILA KUMAR

Two things immediately hit those who arrive at the Livraria Lello in Portugal's Porto. One is the bouncer. He has a genial half-smile pasted on his lips, and is courteously listening to people whose tickets he is checking. But nothing can disguise the fact that he is a bouncer, probably the very first bouncer in all the world to grace the doorstep of a bookstore.

Livraria Lello, perhaps the world’s most beautiful bookstore, first opened in 1906. It’s packed into the compact confines of a neo-Gothic building that looks quite commonplace on the outside but which has the most gorgeous interiors ever. And the reader, the bookshop junkie, or the gawking tourist, none of them can enter the hallowed hall of this Livraria without having purchased a ticket online. The voucher system, started in 2015 to turn tourists into readers, costs almost 16 euros but is entirely deductible against the purchase of books. But first one has to gape. And there's much to gape at.