Engraved stationery gives Benneton Graveur a paper-based specialism, with calling cards among the Paris house's work since 1880. In the Bay Area, Books Inc. offers new fiction and children's books, continuing a bookselling history that began in 1851. Boston's Brattle Book Shop deals in used and rare books, with out-of-print editions among the stock. Maps and prints broaden the Boston shop's paper material, within a business that dates to 1825.
Paris engraving house founded in 1880 by Emile Benneton in the Madeleine quarter, now at 75 Boulevard Malesherbes; hand-engraves prestige stationery and calling cards, with craftspeople recognized as Meilleurs Ouvriers de France.
Best for Engraved stationery and heirloom correspondence.
Benneton Graveur is a Paris engraving house founded in 1880 by Emile Benneton in the Madeleine quarter, historically supplying prestige stationery to European royal courts and the era's social elite. The house is now based at 75 Boulevard Malesherbes in the 8th arrondissement and continues to produce hand-engraved stationery using traditional engraving tools and dies; its craftspeople hold Meilleurs Ouvriers de France status.
Founded in 1851 and billing itself as the West's oldest independent bookseller, this Bay Area company opened its Campbell store at The Pruneyard in 2017. The shop carries new fiction, children's books and gifts, and hosts author events across a family of about a dozen Northern California locations.
Best for New fiction, children's books and gifts
Books Inc. traces its story to 1851, when Anton Roman, an immigrant from Central Europe who had struck gold at Shasta City, opened a bookstore there. He moved it to Montgomery Street in San Francisco in 1855. Alex Robertson inherited the business in 1882, rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake and fire, and ran it until 1924. Leon Gelber and Ted Lilianthal followed on Sutter Street. In 1946 Lew Lengfeld bought the store and gave it the name Books Inc. Lengfeld died in 1996 as national chains arrived on the West Coast. The company closed ten of twelve stores and entered Chapter 11, emerging in August 1997 with four shops under Michael Grant and Michael Tucker. Tucker led the company until 2019, when Andrew Perham, with the firm since 2010, took over. The Campbell store trades at 1875 S. Bascom Avenue, Suite 600, in the Pruneyard. In January 2025 Books Inc. again filed for Chapter 11, citing rising costs and the shift to online buying. In September 2025 it asked the bankruptcy court to approve a sale to BI Acquisition Co., a Barnes & Noble affiliate, for 3.25 million dollars. KQED reported that the nine remaining stores would keep the Books Inc. name. The company's own website now carries the Barnes & Noble copyright and describes its beginnings in the Gold Rush days of 1851.
David Bolduc founded the Boulder Bookstore in 1973 with ten bookcases and five staff at 1133 Pearl Street. Since 1991 it has occupied the Cheney Block of 1899 at 1107 Pearl, on the corner of 11th Street on the pedestrian mall. More than 100,000 titles fill three floors. The upstairs ballroom, once a dance hall, hosts more than 150 author events a year.
Best for New and used books across several floors, author readings
Boulder Bookstore opened in 1973 at 1133 Pearl Street. Founder David Bolduc started with ten bookcases and five employees in the front of a building shared with a Mexican import store and a basement plant shop. In 1991 the store moved along Pearl to the Cheney Block, built in 1899. The building was renamed the Buckingham Block in 1905, as the stone at the top still reads. Bolduc hired a feng shui consultant to place the entrance and the office during the remodel. He fitted a tin ceiling on the main floor to match the building's period while saving energy. The Upper North Room, acquired in 1994, is known as the Annex. The store now employs about fifty people across 20,000 square feet and three floors. It stocks more than 100,000 titles, with a used-book department and an out-of-print service. It reports its bestsellers to the New York Times and the Denver Post. The ballroom upstairs was used from 1899 for lodge meetings and dances, with the orchestra in the mezzanine where the offices now sit. Later a Buddhist congregation met there. It now hosts more than 150 author events a year. The stained glass in its north windows was made to match the original west pair. Bolduc once organised readings for Allen Ginsberg when the poet lived in Boulder. He was a founding member of the Boulder Independent Business Alliance. The corner of Pearl and 11th was once called Pearl and Fight for the bars that stood there.
The Brattle Book Shop dates its founding to 1825 in Boston's Cornhill section. The Gloss family has run it since 1949. It fills a three-story building at 9 West Street with more than 250,000 used, rare and out-of-print books, plus maps, prints and an outdoor lot of bargain carts. Proprietor Ken Gloss appraises for Harvard, Boston University and the FBI and appears on Antiques Roadshow.
Best for Antiquarian and used books
The Brattle Book Shop was founded in 1825 in the Cornhill section of Boston. It has belonged to the Gloss family since 1949. George Gloss and his son Kenneth built it into one of the larger antiquarian book shops in the country, and Ken Gloss remains the proprietor. The shop moved to West Street in 1969. George marked the move by riding through Boston in a horse-drawn covered wagon, handing out books and telling passers-by to go west. The shop still occupies the three-story building at 9 West Street in Downtown Boston. Two floors hold general used books and a third floor holds rare and antiquarian volumes, with an outside sale lot of bargain carts. The stock runs past 250,000 items, from books and maps to prints, postcards and ephemera on every subject. The rare book room keeps first editions and fine leather bindings. An experienced buyer is on hand during the day. The shop buys everything from single volumes to whole estates, by appointment. Ken Gloss is a past president of the New England chapter of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America. He appraises books and libraries for Harvard, Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern and the FBI, among others. He appears on Antiques Roadshow and lectures to library groups and historical societies across New England. The shop produces a podcast called the Brattlecast, and its staff post a find of the week from the shelves.
Börsenblatt (17 Jan 2018) named it in the 'Deutschlands schönste Buchhandlungen' series: 150-year family firm, fourth generation Götz Mennenöh, Apostelnstrasse 7. Local Shop Guide independently: founded 1865 by Carl Roemke; still independent; same address.
Hamburg’s oldest family-owned bookshop, serving Ottensen with literature and events.Established 1878.
Best for Literature and events at Hamburg's oldest family-owned bookshop since 1878
Buchhandlung Christiansen was founded in 1878 and is recognized as Hamburg's oldest bookshop still under continuous family ownership, now run by the fourth generation of the same family. The shop sits on Bahrenfelder Straße in Ottensen, a former working-class industrial district in Hamburg-Altona that has, over recent decades, become one of the city's denser independent-retail and cultural neighborhoods, and Christiansen has remained a fixture through that shift. Its stock spans fiction, children's and young-adult literature, travel writing, political and contemporary-history non-fiction, English-language titles, audiobooks and graphic novels, reflecting a general trade bookshop rather than a specialist. Beyond retail, the shop runs a recurring after-hours format called "AusleseZeit" (roughly, 'time to pick'), in which small private groups of two to ten people can browse the closed shop for three uninterrupted hours -- an events model built around the store's own physical space rather than an off-site venue. It also operates an online ordering channel with in-store pickup or home delivery, layering a modern sales channel onto a 19th-century family business without relocating or renaming it.
The nonprofit Outer Banks Conservationists steward the 1875 red-brick Currituck Beach Lighthouse, which visitors climb up 220 steps beside the Whalehead estate. A museum shop at the base sells lighthouse-themed books and gifts, with admissions funding the tower's ongoing restoration.
Best for Heritage lighthouse climb and museum shop
Set in an 1898 island home shaded by live oaks, Books to be Red is Ocracoke's independent bookstore paired with Deepwater Pottery, offering curated titles alongside locally made pottery and handmade gifts. Shoppers can visit the School Road store or order books through the shop's Bookshop.org page.
Best for Bookstore, pottery, handmade gifts, local craft, gift shop
Ernster is a family bookshop founded in Luxembourg City in 1889, today running eleven shops and two cafes across the country. It sells books in four languages plus games, stationery and educational materials through its shops and an online store with a multi-million-title catalogue.
Founded by French emigre Gustave David in 1896, G. David trades in antiquarian and secondhand books, remainders and fine bindings from St Edward's Passage. The shop buys private libraries and single volumes and is still run by successors of the original market-stall bookseller.
Best for David trades in antiquarian and secondhand books
Gustave David, a thirty-six-year-old Parisian, began buying and selling books on the Cambridge Market in 1896. As trade grew he opened a bookshop with his son Hubert David in St Edward's Passage, where the business still stands. The market stall ceased trading in 1981, but the shop continued to flourish in its passage off the market square. Today the firm is run by Gustave's great grandson David Asplin and his business partner Neil Adams. David joined in 1968 and Neil in 1979, and between them they count over 100 years of bookselling in Cambridge. The stock ranges across antiquarian books, including first editions of works by Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin, and natural history and travel books with engravings. Second hand books fill the general shelves, and new books are sold at reduced prices. Antiquarian prints and maps form a further department, with a large collection of original engravings of Cambridge and its colleges and thousands of prints and maps on other subjects. The shop remains a meeting place for bibliophiles from many countries, and it continues to buy single volumes and whole libraries from private sellers.
Founded in 1844, this Mount Road bookseller stocks fiction, academic titles and Tamil-interest books. The house once ran the railway station bookstalls across the south and still trades under the name of its Victorian founder, Abel Joshua Higginbotham.
Best for Historic bookshop and general reading
Higginbothams is a bookshop at No. 116 Anna Salai, the road once called Mount Road, in Chennai. It describes itself as trading since 1844. Abel Joshua Higginbotham reached Madras by ship in the mid-1800s, by his company's account without ticket or papers. He found work as a librarian at the Wesleyan Book Depository. When the mission closed the shop in 1844 he bought the stock and moved the books to Mount Road under his own name. Copies of Queen Victoria's 1858 proclamation were distributed from the store. Sir Charles Trevelyan, Governor of Madras, praised its shelves of philosophy and classical literature. The firm supplied European books to Prince Edward VII on his visits and earned a place in John Murray's Handbook of the Madras Presidency. Higginbotham served as Sheriff of Madras and died in 1891. His son Charles Herbert Higginbotham took the firm onward, opening in Bangalore in an 1897 Palladian building on South Parade and setting up bookstalls at railway stations across the south. The house published Culinary Jottings for Madras in 1884 by Colonel Arthur Robert Kenney-Herbert, who wrote as Wyvern. It was awarded Royal Booksellers in 1875. Higginbothams has been part of the Amalgamations Group since the 1940s, with branches at Chennai Egmore and Chennai Central stations and the airport. Scroll.in told the founder's story at length in 2018.
This Marienplatz café sits inside a branch of Hugendubel, the German bookstore chain that has traded since 1893 and remains family-run five generations later. Alongside books, it offers coffee, reading areas, and tolino e-readers.
Best for Coffee, books and reading nooks at Marienplatz
This Marienplatz café operates inside a branch of Hugendubel, the German bookstore chain founded in 1893 and still, more than 130 years later, run by the same family — currently siblings Nina and Maximilian Hugendubel in its fifth generation. The company operates more than 100 branches across Germany with roughly 1,600 employees, selling books, eBooks, audiobooks, toys, calendars, stationery, and film alongside its tolino e-readers. That last detail is a real distinguishing fact rather than a footnote: Hugendubel co-founded the tolino alliance, a shared German digital-reading platform the company describes as internationally unique, giving customers access to more than three million eBook titles through a device sold at its own counters. The Marienplatz café slots into that broader identity as the pause button on a bookstore visit — a coffee and a reading area inside a business built, at its core, on getting people to sit down with a book rather than browse and leave. It's not a standalone specialty roaster chasing single-origin lots; it's a café attached to one of Germany's oldest and largest family booksellers, where the draw is the shelves as much as the cup, and where the till behind the counter is backed by a company old enough to have outlasted most of its original competitors twice over.
1053 Budapest, Múzeum krt. 13-15., Hungary / Budapest / Hungary
Magyar József opened Központi Antiquarium at Múzeum körút 13 in 1891; Magyar Nemzet: after the 1952 merger it became Hungarys largest antiquarian bookshop (200+ sqm selling floor).
Best for Antiquarian books at Múzeum körút 13 in a house opened in 1891.
Paris's technical and scientific bookstore since 1894. Six floors of books on architecture, engineering, computer science, design, and applied arts. The architecture section on the ground floo.
Best for Six floors of books on architecture, engineering, computer science, design
Founded in Paris in 1801 by Giovanni Antonio Galignani — a family in the book trade since 1520s Venice — and at 224 rue de Rivoli since 1856, Galignani is an English-language bookshop. Six family generations on, its wood-panelled rooms hold three departments: English, French, and the Fine Arts section added when English books were banned under the Occupation.
Best for English-language books and fine-arts volumes in Paris
Antiquarian bookshop in the Galerie Vivienne, one of the passage's original tenants when it opened in 1826 as Librairie Petit-Siroux. Acquired in 1890 by the ancestor of current owner Francois Jousseaume; sells rare books, prints and engravings across two units facing each other.
Best for Rare books and old-world atmosphere in Passage Vivienne
Librairie Jousseaume occupies two shopfronts facing each other inside the Galerie Vivienne, the neoclassical covered passage in Paris's 2nd arrondissement that opened in 1826. The bookshop was one of the gallery's original tenants, first trading under the name Librairie Petit-Siroux. In 1890 the business passed to an ancestor of the current proprietor, Francois Jousseaume, whose family has run it since and whose name it has carried ever since. Now among the oldest continuously operating bookshops in Paris, it deals largely in secondhand and antiquarian material: books dating back to the 19th century, prints, engravings, postcards and paperbacks.
142 La Canebière, 13001 Marseille, France / Marseille / France
Librairie des Allées founded 1882 by Joseph Carbonell; bought 1919 by Ernest Maupetit; LIR label (Marseille Tourism bookshops page; Livres Hebdo 2019; house Qui sommes-nous).
Best for Marseille Tourism and Livres Hebdo call it the oldest bookshop in the city.
Since 1896, in the house where Montesquieu once lived, Mollat has grown into France's largest independent bookshop — 300,000 titles and the beating heart of literary Bordeaux.
Best for France’s first independent bookshop, 1896
Founded Turin 1848 on Piazza San Carlo; ALAI member still trading rare books and prints at Via Po 7 (official site; ALAI directory, catalogue 349-2026).
Best for Rare books and prints from a Turin antiquarian founded in 1848.
Founded 1872 (as Libreria Beuf/Casanova); one of Turin’s oldest bookshops, reopened January 2025 in Galleria Subalpina (MuseoTorino; RAI TGR Piemonte).
Best for International books in one of Turin’s oldest bookshops.
A historic two-level bookshop selling Portuguese and international books in a Neo-Manueline building. The present shop building opened in 1906. Established 1881.
Best for Portuguese and international books inside a Neo-Manueline building opened in 1906
Operating since 1978 on Lagoon Road, the Lord Howe Island Museum holds 50,000+ specimens tracing the island's history to its 1834 discovery, including its stick-insect recovery program. Its free shop sells island-made crafts and natural history books.
Best for Island-made crafts and natural history books
The Lord Howe Island Museum has operated since 1978 on Lagoon Road, holding more than 50,000 scientific specimens, books, photographs and cultural objects that trace the island's natural and human history back to its 1834 discovery - the source of the museum's own tagline, "Discovering more since 1834." Admission is free every day of the week, with the museum relying on donations, bequests and sponsorships rather than ticket sales to stay open, a model that keeps the collection accessible to both residents and the relatively small number of visitors the island receives each year. The permanent galleries cover the island's geology, biodiversity and conservation history, and give particular attention to the Lord Howe Island phasmid, a large flightless stick insect once thought extinct and now the subject of an active recovery program that the museum treats as a flagship story rather than one exhibit among many. The attached shop is built around the same material: books and locally authored titles tied to the island's natural history, art prints, screen-printed tea towels made by island artisans, and wood-turned crafts, rather than generic souvenirs bought in from elsewhere. Buying something here supports a museum that charges nothing at the door, and most of what's on the shelf ties directly back to the collection and conservation work happening in the galleries behind it.
M. Lengfeld'sche Buchhandlung has sold books in Cologne since 1842 and lists its shop at Kolpingplatz 1. Its selection includes classic and contemporary world literature, with poetry and a children's section among its special interests. Book recommendations and a reading programme extend the shop's work beyond the purchase of an individual title.
Best for Literature from classics to modern works, with poetry and classic editions
M. Lengfeld'sche Buchhandlung is a Cologne bookshop with a history dating to 1842 and an address at Kolpingplatz 1. Its selection spans world literature from classic works to contemporary writing, with poetry receiving particular attention. Paperbacks and travel guides sit alongside a children's and young-adult section, giving the shop several distinct kinds of reader to serve.
The bookshop names classic-edition publishers including Manesse and Winkler, making edition choice part of the appeal for literature readers. Its website also offers book recommendations, rather than leaving the visitor with a list of categories alone. A reading programme and the associated Literaturfreunde organisation connect bookselling with discussion around authors and their work.
For a particular title, start with the author and edition you want rather than assuming that all translations are interchangeable. A gift for a younger reader calls for a different choice from a collected classic or poetry volume. Consult the current event information separately if a reading is part of the reason for your visit.
Historic Lisbon stationery since 1891 — hand-selected notebooks, art supplies, and Portuguese papers in a preserved 1920s storefront.
Best for Historic stationery and art supplies.
Papelaria Fernandes is one of Lisbon's oldest continuously operating stationery businesses, founded in 1891 by Joaquim and Artur Lourenço. Located in the Baixa neighborhood on Rua do Ouro, with additional entrance at Rua Vitória 41, the shop retains a well-preserved late-1920s facade of iron and glass while the interior was thoughtfully remodeled in the 1980s. The shop is known for its curated collection of premium notebooks, sketchbooks, and journals crafted with care. The upper floor showcases decorative cards, wrapping papers, packaging materials, and comprehensive art supplies. The main floor carries general stationery essentials alongside specialty items. Visitors consistently note the sensory experience—the scent of paper, ink, and craftsmanship. The staff are described as deeply knowledgeable and courteous. Papelaria Fernandes has expanded across multiple Lisbon locations, including a branch in the Chiado neighborhood.
An Icelandic bookshop, founded 1872 — the national living room where a book-mad nation browses, sips and buys for jólabókaflóð. Every Icelander has stood in these aisles.
Historic Milan paper specialist selling antique prints, maps, stationery, notebooks and paper-based decorative objects. founded 1881 after Francesco Pettinaroli moved from Lake Orta to Milan, first beside Galleria Vittorio Emanuele; now on Via Brera.
Best for Historic handcrafted stationery and notebooks; traditional Milanese paper craft heritage
Amsterdam bookshop tracing to 1853, when Jacobus Hendrik Scheltema opened his first shop; moved into a five-storey, 3,200-square-metre store on the Rokin in 2015, and since 2024 has operated as Athenaeum | Scheltema under new ownership.
Best for Multistorey Dutch and English book browsing
Scheltema traces to 1853, when Jacobus Hendrik Scheltema opened a bookshop in Amsterdam at the corner of Kromelleboogsteeg and Beursstraat. The business changed hands and names repeatedly over the following century: it became Scheltema & Holkema's Boekhandel under Tjomme van Holkema, was sold to Klaas Groesbeek in January 1882, and moved to a new building at Rokin 74 three years later. The store operated independently until 1970, when it became part of the publishing group Kluwer. It later relocated to Koningsplein, where it remained from 1985 until May 2015, when it moved into a new five-storey building on the Rokin — a 3,200-square-metre store that became one of the largest bookshops in Europe, stocking roughly 120,000 titles at any time and receiving over 1,000 new books on busy days. Ownership changed again in 2014, when Novamedia (parent of the Dutch Postcode Lottery) acquired the business; Novamedia held it until 2024, when Athenaeum Boekhandel took over and began operating the store under the combined name Athenaeum | Scheltema. Despite the ownership and branding change, the shop continues to trade from its Rokin address under the historic Scheltema name in everyday use.
Founded in 1886, Sherman's is a Maine bookseller, and this Main Street branch pairs its shelves with stationery and Maine-made gifts. The Bar Harbor store keeps the independent bookshop tradition alive on Mount Desert Island.
Smith's Bookshop was established by A. D. Smith in 1894 and remains a fully independent Christchurch bookseller. It now trades from the Tannery Emporium at 3 Garlands Road in Woolston with more than 40,000 new and secondhand titles listed by category. The stock leans to rare and out-of-print books on New Zealand, from regional history and te ao Māori to farming and the arts, with international titles and children's books alongside.
Best for Secondhand and rare books
Smith's Bookshop anchors its identity in Christchurch rather than treating New Zealand books as a small regional shelf. A. D. Smith established the business in 1894, and the shop states that it remains fully independent. Its current home is the Tannery Emporium at 3 Garlands Road in Woolston. The catalogue contains more than 40,000 new and second-hand books arranged by subject, with rare and out-of-print material given particular weight. New Zealand regional history appears beside te ao Maori, natural history and the arts. Farming, fishing and hunting sit alongside literature, children's books and international titles. That structure explains the shop's practical value: it can support a narrowly local search without becoming only an antiquarian specialist. The bookseller also says it helps source hard-to-find titles, which connects the depth of the catalogue to an active service. Smith's is therefore a strong address for readers building a New Zealand collection, researching Christchurch or looking for a title that ordinary general bookshops no longer carry.
This bookstore and bar occupies the C.H. Evans Firehouse, a red-brick 1889 building designed by Michael O'Connor for Engine Company No. 3, converted to retail use and opened by a descendant of the Evans family in 2005. Evans' Ale, first brewed by Cornelius H. Evans in the 1800s, is still poured at the bar beneath the firehouse's original mahogany mantle.
Best for New and used books alongside a bar
The Spotty Dog Books & Ale occupies the C.H. Evans firehouse at 440 Warren Street in Hudson, New York. The building was erected in 1889 as the first purpose-built home of Engine Company No. 3, a company whose roots go back to 1799 and which took the name of Cornelius H. Evans, politician and brewer, in 1868. Architect Michael O'Connor planned the structure, and the cornerstone was laid on December 3, 1889 with gifts from the community that included a mahogany mantle and a bronze chandelier as well as a brass sliding pole. The upstairs served as a social hall while the truck floor was cleared for dances. In 2004 the firehouse was converted to retail use, with period doors replacing the garage door and a bar surface cut from a reclaimed bowling alley. Kelley Drahushuk, a Hudson native and Evans descendant, opened the store in 2005 after moving her art supply business down Warren Street. Her uncle Neil Evans, Cornelius H. Evans IV, owns the building and brews Evans' Ale in Albany, which is still poured at the bar. Some 10,000 volumes fill the shelves, with an art supply room at the back and kombucha on tap beside the beer. Author events and live music draw the town in, and trivia nights fill the tables. Hudson Valley Magazine profiled Drahushuk in 2014 and the Times Union covered the store in 2022.
Torn Light Records began in Northern Kentucky in 2014, spent a decade in Cincinnati and moved to Chicago in January 2024. The Bucktown shop at 1855 N Milwaukee carries new and used records alongside books and print, and buys collections of any size.
Best for New and used records, tapes, CDs, books and zines
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