Exploring a new city often means sampling its markets, bars, restaurants and attractions, but for the bookworms among us, finding its best book shop will be high on the agenda, too.
There are plenty of brilliant ones across the world, but language learning platform Preply has just ranked over 100 of the very best bookshops and libraries by analysing online reviews from Google and TripAdvisor, and we’ve now got our very own library of the most popular ones on the planet.
Topping the ranking is Daunt Books, which actually has 10 different London locations including in Notting Hill, Hampstead and Marylebone (though it was this one which featured in the study) and gained an overall rating of 96.58.
The independent bookshop chain has been around since 1990, and the original outpost boasts pretty oak balconies and ornate windows, all inside an Edwardian building – it doesn’t get more classic than that.
El Ateneo Grand Splendid, a bookshop in Argentina which sits in what used to be a theatre, claimed second place with a rating of 95.9, and in third place was the State Library Victoria, one of the oldest libraries in Australia which dates back to 1854, and has a rating of 95.21.
These are the world’s 12 most popular bookshops
- Daunt Books, London
- El Ateneo Grand Splendid, Buenos Aires
- State Library Victoria, Melbourne
- Bookstore Dominicanen, Maastricht
- The Last Bookstore, Los Angeles
- Starfield Library, Seoul
- Shakespeare and Company, Paris
- Powell's Books, Portland
- Trinity College Library, Dublin
- Libreria Acqua Alta, Venice
- Klementinum, Prague
- Livraria Lello, Porto
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