I am now the proud owner of a Cartão Amigo for Livraria Lello & Irmão. Why do I need a “Friend Card”? Because as of 2015 there’s an entrance fee, and daunting queues. With this card I was told could skip the booth for the entrance fee (which often has its own queue), get in free, and bring three people with me. If you visit me, I’ll take you to Lello! Ah, the perks of being local. Lello just celebrated their 110th birthday, by the way. They aren’t the oldest bookstore in Porto, but they’re the most well-known.
Last summer the popularity of the bookstore grew to the point where the gawkers outnumbered the book-browsers in droves, ruining the bookstore experience with selfies and crowding for photo-ops around the staircase. Much of this stems from Lello being lauded in major publications as one of the top bookstores in the world, and appearing in every tourist guide book for Porto. That comes as no surprise, because the architecture is truly grand. But for a younger generation, it has stronger cultural appeal: British author J.K. Rowling* lived in Porto in the early ’90s, teaching English at night and writing the first chapters of Harry Potter by day.
Lello experimented with different ways to handle the overcrowding situation, from banning photography altogether (which was the case when I first visited in 2011) to allowing photography for one hour before the store opened. Eventually they gave up the photo ban, sometime last winter. The problem with both policies is that it didn’t stop people from trying to take photos all the time, and enforcement required more staff — they were getting up to 5,000 visits a day.
In July 2015, Lello started charging an entrance fee of 3 euros, which is deducted from any in-store purchase. This sparked a protest among those who view Lello as a public library or a free museum. It is neither — Lello has always been a bookshop, but due to all the fanfare only a tiny fraction of the visitors milling around were there for books. Before July, I witnessed some pretty rude behaviour coming from people with cameras who were even asking people to move so they could take pictures! (As far as I’m concerned, no person has any more right to be there than another, camera or not. If you want to take pictures, wait for people to move out of the frame.)
From what I’ve heard and read thus far, Lello’s experiment appears to be working: visits are down but business is up. Good for them! I also found that more people were actually browsing merchandise rather than just taking pictures, motivated by the deductible entrance fee to leave with something material for the three euros.
Official site (PT/EN): http://www.livrarialello.pt/
May 28, 2015: Postcards From Livraria Lello & Irmão, Porto
Despite the new entrance fee, the queues were far too long for me this summer to attempt going into Lello. No thanks! I wanted to wait for the off-season and hoped for a new policy that allowed locals to go in for free.
summer queues in front of Livraria Lello & Irmão
I found out about the Cartão Amigo in early December from another local and I finally got one today, which means I’ll be visiting Lello a lot more often. It will also give me more opportunities to photograph all the details inside — there are many, as you can see — and make some book discoveries.
Decus in Labore is Latin for ‘dignity in labour’
You can still see the original name of the bookshop (and French owner), Livraria Chardron
the tiny café where JK Rowling likely never had a coffee in, let alone write anything
* By the way, I have to quash this persistent rumour once and for all that J.K. Rowling lived in Porto for years and years. It’s true that she taught English here, that she married a Portuguese man, and had her first child with him. But Rowling was only in Portugal from 1991-1993, and had written all of three chapters while here. (On the Local Porto website it says she was in Porto for 10 years, and that has spread to other sites.) There are other Harry Potter-related myths, too. Don’t be fooled!
On Rowling’s own website it says she arrived in Portugal nine months after her mother died on December 30, 1990, but she moved to Edinburgh by Christmas 1993… which, come to think of it, means I lived in the same city as J.K. Rowling for more than a year and likely crossed paths with her, unawares. At one point she lived on the same street.
January 23, 2016
Album: Portugal [Winter 2015/2016]
Possibly related posts:
- A Morning At Porto’s Bolhão Market Photos of Mercado do Bolhão, Porto’s municipal market in the heart of the city, have been conspicuously absent from this blog for no good reason. But yesterday I compensated for...
- Porto’s Café Majestic If you follow the tourist guidebooks, most — if not all — point to Café Majestic as a place not to miss while in Porto. Whether or not you will...
- Postcards From Livraria Lello & Irmão, Porto Following on from the preview last week, here are more images taken at Livraria Lello & Irmão. At over 100 years old, it is one of the oldest bookstores in Portugal and...
- Nativity Scene Overload On Sunday we joined the merry hordes of people who chose the weekend before Christmas to buy gifts. This is something I ordinarily avoid like the plague, but we aimed...
- Hazy Porto I took some couchsurfers around Porto today, a zigzaggy circuit that included viewpoints, bridges, train station, cafes, city hall, lunch in Gaia, lots of typical Porto steep street climbs and...
