Buenos Aires has been home to many great writers like Robert Arlt, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Julio Cortazar and Jorge Luis Borges. The capital city of Argentina has many bookshops including 102 rare and secondhand shops.
El Ateneo bookshop in Buenos Aires is regarded as the second most beautiful in the world. The bookshop was once a theater converted into a bookstore in the early 2000s, keeping its ceiling frescos and statues in place. Millions of visitors also go to the city for the Annual Book Fair.
Dublin is an ideal destination for book lovers since it is packed with literary sites. You can visit Trinity College Library, which exhibits an illuminated manuscript of the Book of Kells, Marsh's Library, Writer's Museum in Parnell Square, and the Chester Beatty Library which has a collection of rare East Asian and Islamic manuscripts.
Another sight to see are the fans of James Joyce's Ulysses decked out in period costumes on the 16th of June as they retrace the Leopold Bloom's journey through the city. You can also join Walking tours on the sites of the novel.
There are lots of things to see and do for book lovers in London. You can go to the Poet's Corner located at the Westminster Abbey where great authors like Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens and Rudyard Kipling lie. You should also look at the second-hand bookshops on Charing Cross Road for a unique find.
Melbourne is hailed as Australia's cultural capital and a UNESCO City of Literature. It's book markets and author-related sites make it a perfect place for literature lovers. You can visit the State Library of Victoria to see the walls of La Trobe room that are covered in quotes from well-loved authors, and if you're lucky, catch celebrated authors giving talks to the guests. You can also go to the Federation Square on Saturdays to check out the book market.
Bibliophiles can wander through the streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana to find old bookstores and visit the Faulkner House Books where they can spend several hours looking through the shelves for unique finds or see the different literary events held throughout the year.
If you live nearby you can visit the lending library known as Iron Rail Book Collective which specialized in radical and hard-to-find books. The library has a vast collection of more than 8,000 titles and is open to the public.
For a slightly spooky but one of a kind encounter with some of the world's well-loved authors, you can visit Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, where a number of literary greats have been buried since the 19th century.
You can start the unique tour at Marcel Proust's black marble tomb and cross over to the southeast corner to find the last resting place of Oscar Wilde. You can also find the mausoleum of Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables and a monolithic tombstone of Guillaume Apollinaire, a surrealist poet.
Rome has some of the most beautiful libraries in the world. Guided tours are offered by Biblioteca Casanatense, the National Institute of Archeology Library, Vatican Library, and the Angelica and Vallicelliana Libraries.
While in Rome you can also visit Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's house on the Via del Corso, Caffe Greco (where many historic figures have had their coffee) and the Keats-Shelley House where John Keats, an English Romantic poet, died in 1824. Keats is buried in the Protestant Cemetery and the house is now a museum.
Stockholm was home to great writers like August Strindberg, Eyvind Johnson and Stieg Larsson, who wrote the Millennium trilogy including The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The City Museum offers Stieg Larsson Millennium tours devoted to the books and allow visitors to follow the footsteps of Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander, at the same time getting more information about the author and their favorite characters.
Another interesting place to visit is the National Library of Sweden which houses the Codex Gigas or "Devil's Bible". It is the biggest existing medieval manuscript and countless legends and myths have started because of its strange illustrations.
Russia has many literary museums. You can visit F.M. Dostoevsky Memorial Museum, which opened in November 12, 1971 in what used to be the apartment of the famous writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. This is where the he lived during the composition of some of his notable works like Brothers Karamazov and The Double: A Petersburg Poem. Dostoevsky's apartment was reconstructed based on the memoirs of his wife and children.
Pay homage to Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the moveable type printer, in the German city of Mainz. While in the city, you can check out the Gutenberg Museum which is dedicated to the story of printing and the inventor's achievements. The museum has the Gutenberg Bible, the first book ever made with the movable type, on display.
This JustFly Reviews 10 Destination for Book Lovers is brought to you by JustFly. Happy Traveling!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer Anders is a freelance travel writer who enjoys exploring off-the-beaten-path locations around the world. She loves hiking national parks and photographing wildlife. You'll also find her eating plenty of local street food.
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