Gillian Knows Best guide to bookstores in Venice
📚There is nothing like the real thing
Last year when our things were delivered from their long storage sojourn in Rome and I had unpacked all of the boxes of books and arranged them on the bookshelves upstairs Lorenzo, the engineer who oversaw (is overseeing?) the renovation, came upstairs. His face drained of all its color and he looked stricken. What’s wrong? I asked. You said you had a lot of books. I didn't realize, he responded with disbelief, trailing off and quickly going back downstairs to check the oldest beam in the house. The one directly underneath the largest, tallest, heaviest bookcase. Here we are a year later. So far, so good. The terrazzo tiled floor/ceiling/old Venetian beam has held the weight of all of those words.
Venice has a long history with books. The city is quite literally where the idea of the modern paperback that we throw in our beach bags comes from. Aldus Manutius moved to Venice at the end of the 1400s, drawn by the open minded opportunities of the merchant minded republic and away from the grip of the church. He created smaller, lighter (in both physical and psychic weight) texts with his presses. This made books more accessible and more affordable. You can see the building where the Aldine Press, established in 1496, was at 2343 Calle della Chiesa in San Polo. It later moved to what is now Campo Manin and was covered by the modern Banca Intesa designed by Pier Luigi Nervi and Angelo Scattolin in 1972.
Printing and book binding still exists here, in part thanks to the Armenian Mekhitarist monks and scholars. You can visit the island of San Lazzaro and see the original printing presses and historic library.
I almost never read a real book anymore. I have a very old Kindle (It works fine so I am waiting patiently until I need to replace it with this new one) and I recently renewed my library card at my childhood library and downloaded the Libby app. I rarely even open one of the dozens of cookbooks that live near the kitchen on the shelves downstairs. But. Browsing in a bookstore is still one of my most favorite things to do. These are my favorite bookstores in Venice.
If you are not traveling to Venice I have curated lists of Italy themed books on Amazon and Bookshop.org.
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