Book Towns by Alex Johnson

Author:Alex Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Published: 2018-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

More information

www.montolieu-livre.fr

www.lacooperative-collectionceresfranco.com

Montolieu is in the Aude department in southern France. It is an hour by road from Toulouse which also has an airport and international train station. Carcassonne is south-east of Montolieu and half an hour away by car.

ÓBIDOS

PORTUGAL

One of the most stunning bookshops is the Grande Livraria de Santiago… Books in various languages crowd onto former altars and bookshelves have replaced pews.

Óbidos in Portugal is a beautiful and historic hilltop town; King Alfonso V married his cousin Isabella of Coimbra here in 1441. A fortified wall encloses a compact medieval town centre filled with cobbled streets and traditional houses.

The town was previously best known for its annual chocolate festival and as the home of the cherry-based liqueur, Ginjinha. That is, until José Pinho, owner of the popular Lisbon bookshop Ler Devagar (Read Slowly, Rua Rodrigues de Faria), had the idea to change Óbidos into a book town.

Óbidos stands out from most other book towns in that, rather than opening up new bookshops, many stores have simply added bookselling to their normal business. So the local art galleries sell art books, the Óbidos Biological Market (the former refectory of the town hall) has placed shelves of cookbooks behind its fresh fruit and vegetables, and the museums stock history, interior design and heritage titles according to their individual focus. Similarly Livraria da Adega (Rua da Porta da Vila), once a wine cellar and now part of a larger coworking space, also has a good selection of books alongside its wine bar.

The Literary Man hotel (Rua D. João d‘Ornelas), run by the town’s former mayor Telmo Faria, has merged accommodation and literature particularly well. Around 50,000 books are for sale, spread around the thirty-bedroom location. There are plans to double that number, helped partly by donations from visitors. Some books are in Portuguese but most in English, with an emphasis on Penguin, Pelican and Pan Books.

There have also been a number of conversions. One of the most stunning bookshops is the Grande Livraria de Santiago, housed inside the town’s thirteenth-century church next to Óbidos’s impressive castle. Books in various languages crowd onto former altars, and bookshelves have replaced pews. O Bichinho do Conto (Estrada dos Casais Brancos) is the country’s first bookshop devoted to children’s titles, housed in a former primary school. It is also experimenting with publishing its own books. The impressive post office building is now a bookshop, and elsewhere the Galeria Pelourinho (Rua Direita) has a good stock of poetry and works by Fernando Pessoa, while Residência Josefa de Óbidos (Rua Dom Vaso Mascarenhas) concentrates on photography titles.

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