Livraria Lello

You are probably looking at the most photographed bookshop in the world. The queue on the pavement owes a great deal to a teenage wizard, and very little to the truth.

1A bookshop with its own story

The business was founded in 1869 by the French publisher Ernesto Chardron. In 1894 it was bought by the brothers José and António Lello, who commissioned a new building from the engineer Francisco Xavier Esteves. It opened on 13 January 1906: a neo-Gothic front and, inside, a red double-curving staircase that looks like carved wood but, according to the shop itself, is reinforced concrete, a real novelty at the time.

2The Hogwarts myth

J. K. Rowling lived in Porto in the early 1990s, teaching English while she began writing Harry Potter. That was enough: for years people repeated that Lello's staircase had inspired Hogwarts. In 2020 Rowling herself set the record straight, writing that she had never visited this bookshop and had not even known it existed.

The myth proved so profitable that since 2015 the shop has charged for entry, refundable against a book, to manage the crowds.

3What to look for

• The two painted figures on the façade, representing Art and Science.
• The «Lello & Irmão» sign, the name of the brothers who built it.
• The queue: it is part of the phenomenon this stop explains.