Shakespeare and Company

What makes it special

Look up as soon as you are inside. Bird cages and other bric-a-brac hang from the ceiling, over rugs, bookish murals, photographs of famous visitors and quotations on the walls. The ground floor runs as a labyrinth of small rooms.

The rooms upstairs are quieter. They hold a small piano, a typewriter, vintage photographs and shelves of older editions, with cushioned seats by the windows.

Over the library door, the founder George Whitman inked his motto: "Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise." The building was a monastery in the early seventeenth century, and the name over the door comes from Sylvia Beach's original Shakespeare and Company of 1919.

Writers still stay here as Tumbleweeds: unpublished writers given a studio in the building for one week to a month. Each is asked to read a book a day, help in the shop for a few hours and write a one-page autobiography.

Some 30,000 writers and artists have slept here since the shop opened, and thousands of their one-page autobiographies are kept in its archive.

Visiting

There is sometimes a queue outside at busy times, because the shop limits how many people are inside at once. It generally moves quickly, about ten to fifteen minutes on a weekend afternoon, and once in you are not hurried out.

While you wait, make sure your bag is small enough. Anything over 40 cm on any side is usually turned away, but handbags, small backpacks and shopping bags can come in if you keep them with you.

Put your camera away at the door, since photos and filming are not allowed inside. Start on the ground floor, then take the creaky staircase up to the reading rooms and sit with a book by the windows.

Pay at any till and ask for the shop stamp in your book. Each till has a different one.

Tips

Keep your bag closed and in front of you, in the queue and between the shelves: the crowds make this a spot pickpockets work. The antiquarian bookshop next door rarely has a queue, but it has no way through into the main shop, so trying it as a shortcut only sends you to the back of the line.

The shop holds at least one free reading or talk a week, open to all. Places are limited, so arrive early.