When we first travel somewhere, we see nothing quite so clearly as the usual categories of tourist destination: the monuments, the museums, the restaurants. Take one step deeper, and we find ourselves in places like cafés and bookstores, the latter especially having exploded in touristic appeal over the past few years. Take Porto’s grand Livraria Lello, which bills itself as “the most beautiful bookstore in the world” — and has arguably done so too successfully, having drawn crowds large enough to necessitate a cover charge. Perhaps we’d have a richer experience if we spent less time in the livrarias and more in the bibliotecas.

That, in any case, is the impression given by the Kings and Things video above, which presents “Ten Magnificent Historical Libraries,” two of them located in Portugal. Standing on a hilltop overlooking Coimbra, the Biblioteca Joanina “is sumptuously decorated in Baroque fashion,” and “contains intricately carved furniture and bookshelves made of exotic woods as well as ivory, and is embellished with cold and chinoiserie motif.” As for the centuries-old volumes on those shelves, they remain in excellent condition thanks to the Biblioteca Joanina’s being one of only two libraries equipped with “a colony of bats to protect the books from insects.”

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