Europe’s Top 10 Cities for Book Lovers

Edinburgh is a haven for literature lovers. This beautiful city offers literary pub tours, book lover tours, and a museum dedicated to literary giants Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Edinburgh also hosts the world’s largest annual international book festival. And in 2004, Edinburgh became the first city in the world named by UNESCO as a “City of Literature.”

Did you think Milan was just about fashion? The city has more than 200 public and private libraries. There are quirky bookshops on every corner, and they hold an annual “Bookcity Milano” festival. All enough to earn Milan recognition from UNESCO as another “City of Literature.”

For centuries, Venice has inspired writers and poets from all over the world. And has served as a setting for many great literary works like Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice or Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. Even when the canals flood the city, one iconic bookstore isn’t worried—Libreria Acqua Alta (Book Store of High Water) has all their books stacked in bathtubs, boats, and even a full-size gondola, keeping them all high and dry.

Madrid is a wonderful city to stroll around. You can visit sites associated with Spanish literary legends such as Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, as well as stop to browse through the 15 million books in Spain’s largest library. Or grab a bite where Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Graham Greene loved to dine. And if you take the metro in Madrid, they have a system called Bibliometro—mini-libraries where you can grab a book for the ride.

A city that turns a Gothic church into a massive library and bookshop has to be a book lover’s paradise.  Óbidos also turned an old fire station, a produce market, and a former wine cellar into bookstores. And there’s even a literary-themed hotel with 65,000 books piled throughout its 20 rooms and common areas. Plus an ancient wine cellar where you can “book” a soothing “bibliotherapy” massage.

As far as book-loving destinations go, Iceland is hard to beat. A country where one where one in ten residents will publish a book in their lifetime. And every Christmas in Iceland, the majority of presents are books. So many books are exchanged that Icelanders call this time of year bókaflóð, which translates to “book flood.”

From the elegant home of Victor Hugo, to the bars and bistros where F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Sartre, and hundreds more hung out, to the stalls of bouquinistes lining the riverbanks of the Seine—nothing tops Paris for book lovers. No wonder Hemingway called it “a moveable feast.”

The Writers’ Museum, the Museum of Literature Ireland—even the museums are literary in Dublin, another UNESCO “City of Literature.” You can even join a literary pub crawl and follow the footsteps of writers from James Joyce and William Butler Yeats to Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and Samuel Beckett.

Ground zero for some of the world’s greatest stories, St. Petersburg offers tours that explore the fictional worlds of Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Gogol, Brodsky, and more. And you can pull into the Pushkin Museum to see where the famous author lived until he was killed in a duel.

Book lovers will feel right at home in Ljubljana, named the World Book Capital by UNESCO and an official City of Literature. Along with its vast library system, the Slovenian capital offers a writers’ trail, literature tours, and many book festivals. And in the spring and summer, you can stop at a Library Under the Treetops, where books and chairs are set up in parts throughout the city.