Recently I read a comment on this place in an article about Overtourism in ‘Der Spiegel’ (August 21, 2018):

It doesn’t take long before the woman at the hotel reception pulls out a city map of Porto. Look, she says, there’s the Old Town and the Douro, there’s the harbour and here, by the way, the pride evident in her voice, is the world’s most beautiful bookshop: Livraria Lello.

It sounds fantastic and the place looks even more amazing in the photos. It’s located in a two-story, neo-Gothic building with lots of dark wood, an abundance of old books, ornamentation and stained glass, and a curved staircase right in the middle. It was opened in 1906, a cathedral of books, a dream for voracious bookworms from all over the world. When traveling, we often look more for the beauty of the past than that of the present. We may even buy a book for vacation reading, to while away evenings on the Atlantic coast. It has been said that J.K. Rowling often visited the Livraria when she lived in Porto at the beginning of the 1990s, a time when she taught English and began dreaming up the Harry Potter series.

Porto is not a big city — with just over 200,000 inhabitants, the Old Town is easily manageable. The first thing you notice when approaching the Livraria Lello is the long line in front of it. Young Japanese travelers, Scandinavian backpackers, families from France, couples from China, Americans and Germans.

A dream turning into a nightmare?

An imposing bouncer stands at the door of the bookshop. To get in, you must first purchase a five-euro ticket bearing the visage of Fernando Pessoa, Portugal’s most famous poet, in the shop next door. There, too, visitors must wait in line, with crowd-control barriers set up just like at the airport check-in desk. Those waiting in line are guided past shelves full of souvenirs, postcards and keychains. The standard tourist bric-à-brac.

The bookstore is every bit is as beautiful as the one in the photos, even if it’s not much of a bookstore these days. No one browses through the merchandise here. They all seem to be taking pictures with their smartphones — photos that look exactly like the more than 7,000 images already posted on TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel website, where Livraria is listed as one of the city’s top sightseeing attractions.

Just like the rest of the country, Livraria Lello stood on the verge of bankruptcy four years ago as a result of the financial crisis. But even then, the bookshop had no lack of visitors. The problem was that people were buying fewer and fewer books. Someone suggested the store ought to start charging an admission fee of five euros. It may have sounded crazy at the time, but 4,000 people now visit Livraria each day while during the summer, the number of daily visitors swells to 5,000. The store had 1.2 million visitors in 2017 and revenues of over 7 million euros.

If the thought of buying a book does cross a visitor’s mind, and there are many tomes to be found here — from translations of classics of Portuguese literature to, of course, the Harry Potter series — the ticket serves as a credit toward that purchase. It is rumoured that Livraria Lello served as the inspiration for Flourish & Blotts, the bookstore where Harry Potter buys his magic books. But Livraria ultimately feels more like a museum or a theatre backdrop than a real place.

For residents of Porto, however, the bookstore has a different story to tell. It is one of economic upswing in a country that was in the throes of crisis not all that long ago. Indeed, Portugal owes its recovery in part to double-digit growth in tourism, including in the areas in the once impoverished north around Porto. Ryanair and EasyJet have been flying to the city for years, and it has long been regarded as the new in-spot for city-escape tourism. Last year, around 2.5 million foreign tourists visited the region, and half of them visited Livraria Lello. Porto still hasn’t become as overrun as places like Barcelona or Amsterdam, cities where locals have begun defending themselves against the hordes of tourists who seem to be taking over. But a divide has developed in Porto — between the tourist city and the city for locals. One can’t help but wonder when a local last visited Livraria Lello. Do Porto residents also have to stand in line and pay five euros?

This short abstract from this article shows the dilemma. As bibliophilic scientist, a place like this would indeed be a dream, a place to identify with. But pilgrimming to that place, to celebrate, honour, experience and breath the place, could turn out to destruct the place. On the other hand not going there might imply final bankruptcy of the place. It is easy to condemn what is taking place, but more challenging to find nuanced solutions. A very topical issue also addressed in our Master Specialisation on ‘Cultural Geography and Tourism’.