In last week’s Nightcrawler, I mentioned I’d be in Lisbon. True to my word, I found myself standing inside Livraria Bertrand this week — the world’s oldest operating bookstore, founded in 1732.
The store feels less like a retail space and more like a time capsule. One employee explained that after the 1755 earthquake, Bertrand moved a few streets down for two decades before returning to this original room. Even today, the wooden panels along the back wall conceal a secret: during the Salazar dictatorship (1933-1974), staff hid forbidden books there. Now, those panels only hide dust — but the stories remain.
What struck me most is how Bertrand has survived by embracing, not denying, its history. You can literally smell the centuries in the paper and wood. The employee told me that the bookstore thrives partly because of its stamp: when you buy a book here, you can have it embossed with the mark of “the world’s oldest bookstore.” That small ritual transforms a purchase into a keepsake.
But heritage alone doesn’t explain Bertrand’s longevity. Location helps — it sits in a lively district of Lisbon, where tourists and locals mingle. So does a refusal to chase trends. “It’s about embracing our history without caring if people know,” the employee told me. At the same time, the store has deftly leveraged modern tools: social media and travel influencers have amplified its profile, driving sales upward in the past two to three years.
The contrast with American mega-booksellers is telling. Bertrand is smaller, but perhaps its very scale — and its intimacy — is part of why it still thrives.
To walk through Bertrand is to walk through layers of history: earthquakes, dictatorships, revolutions, and now a tourism boom fueled by Instagram. In the end, it’s not just books that Bertrand sells — it’s the feeling of endurance itself.
