Chiara Basso
Most beautiful bookshop in the world
Without doubt, the most beautiful bookshop in the world is Strand Bookstore in New York. Found on the corner of Broadway and 12th Street, it's a wonderful place that is sure to enchant you and make you stay hours until its closing time of 11 pm. Sometimes there's even a queue outside...a queue for a bookshop? Why? Well, first it looks like the Library of Babel as described by Borges. Shelves upon shelves, floors above and below, piles of books to use as stools...it seems chaotic, but on closer inspection you'll realize that everything is strictly ordered. There are 27km of shelves, mostly of second-hand books.
Everything can be found here...books on photography, religion, Chinese calendars, classics in the original language, manuals for chess and mah jong, audio books...you can buy leather-bound classics for $400, but thankfully other books here are a lot cheaper! It's the kind of place where you can enter looking for one thing in particular, and end up browsing unrelated books for hours.
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