Ernesto Chardron’s shop, José Lello’s firm and the 1894 purchase.

Livraria Lello began as somebody else’s shop. Portuguese Wikipedia traces the business to the Livraria Internacional de Ernesto Chardron, founded in Porto in 1869 by Ernesto Chardron, a Frenchman who had worked at another bookshop in the city before becoming a publisher in his own right; it says he published much of the work of the novelist Camilo Castelo Branco. After Chardron died, the house was sold to the firm Lugan & Genelioux, and soon afterwards Mathieux Lugan was its only owner.

The Lello name arrived separately. English Wikipedia says that in 1881 José Pinto de Sousa Lello set up the firm David Pereira & Lello with his brother-in-law, and that after Pereira’s death the business carried on as José Pinto de Sousa Lello & Irmão, with his younger brother António Lello as partner; Portuguese Wikipedia describes José’s 1881 shop as a business that both sold and published books. On 30 June 1894, Portuguese Wikipedia says, Lugan sold the old Chardron house to José Lello, who kept it going with António under the company name “Sociedade José Pinto Sousa Lello & Irmão”. In 1898 the stock of a further Porto bookseller, Livraria Lemos & C.ª, joined the firm. Aurora Pedro Pinto, who runs the shop today, told Forbes Portugal that the Chardron catalogue came with the business.

The business then needed a building of its own. Both Wikipedia editions say the brothers commissioned the engineer Francisco Xavier Esteves, and Portuguese Wikipedia gives the opening day as 13 January 1906, with the poet Guerra Junqueiro among the guests. Forbes Portugal used the same date in the body of its 2026 article, and its news report of 11 January 2026 announced the shop’s 120th anniversary for 13 January, marked with free entry and a gift book for 120 visitors, a habit it repeats on its anniversaries.

A painted facade, a stained-glass motto and the red staircase.

The shop’s identity is mostly its building. English Wikipedia describes the exterior as neo-Gothic with Art Nouveau elements and an interior with hints of Art Deco. The front is a wide, flattened arch with a central door and a display window on each side; above it, three tall windows are flanked by two painted figures representing Art and Science, which Portuguese Wikipedia credits to the Belgian painter Joseph Bielmann. Pinnacles finish the front, and the firm’s name, Lello e Irmão, is painted below the windows among plant motifs and geometric shapes.

Inside, a forked staircase climbs to a gallery with carved wooden balusters. Portuguese Wikipedia calls it the escadaria vermelha, the red staircase, and lists it with the worked ceilings and the stained glass as the shop’s defining features. English Wikipedia says the ceilings and walls are painted plaster made to look like carved wood, and that the rails and wooden cart once used to move books between the shelves are still in place. Under carved canopies on the pillars, Portuguese Wikipedia says, the sculptor Romão Júnior placed busts of six Portuguese writers, among them Eça de Queirós, Antero de Quental and Camilo Castelo Branco.

Above the stairs is a skylight of roughly eight by 3.5 metres. Portuguese Wikipedia credits it to the Dutch artist Gerardus Samuel van Krieken and says it carries the owners’ monogram and the motto Decus in Labore, which it translates as dignity in work. Together with the painted name on the front, the motto and monogram serve as the shop’s historic marks.

The name itself has moved around. Portuguese Wikipedia says the company became Livraria Lello e Irmão, Lda. on 24 May 1919, when António’s son Raul Reis Lello joined; was simplified to Livraria Lello in 1930, when António’s son-in-law José Pereira da Costa came in; went back to Lello & Irmão five years later; and has been plain Livraria Lello again since 1995. That year, Portuguese Wikipedia says, the shop was restored, computerised and given an art gallery and a space for literary gatherings, and English Wikipedia dates the reopening to 15 March 1995.

A Porto building, a family firm and a voucher at the door.

Some bookshops take their identity from the building they occupy before any sign goes up. A shop in a former theatre, warehouse, garage or bank inherits ceiling heights, columns, stairs and windows it did not design, and those features often end up doing the work a logo might do elsewhere. Exposed trusses, a balcony or an old frontage become the backdrop to every photograph and every event, and they are hard to copy in a branch somewhere else. When such a shop moves, the question becomes what to carry with it: the shelving, the fixtures, a sign, or only the name. Keeping one physical element from the old rooms can give regular customers a thread of continuity in an unfamiliar space.

Inside, a great deal of the identity is handwritten. Staff recommendation cards clipped to shelves give each bookseller a small public voice, and their handwriting, paper stock and length vary from card to card in a way a printed label does not. Events and readings add a calendar to the identity: posters, a printed or emailed programme, a chair layout and a microphone stand become recurring images of the shop. Gift wrapping at the till, loyalty cards stamped or punched by hand and a store newsletter written by staff all carry the name into homes. When a larger company buys an independent shop and keeps its name, these local habits are often what keeps the shop recognisable to the people who used it before, so for designers the task is to document them as carefully as the mark itself.

New owners, an entry voucher and a restored grey front.

The current owners are a Porto business family. English and Portuguese Wikipedia both say Avelino and Aurora Pedro Pinto, owners of the Lionesa Group, acquired a majority stake in the company in 2014 and the whole of it in 2023; Aurora Pedro Pinto told Forbes Portugal that the family bought Lello in 2015, initially a majority stake and later the rest. She described a building where rain came through the roof and visitors came in, took photographs and left, and said the family chose to keep it a bookshop rather than turn it into a museum.

The answer was a ticket. Portuguese Wikipedia says that from 23 July 2015 entry required a payment that is deducted from the price of a book, both to manage visitor numbers and to pay for conservation. Forbes Portugal described the same voucher model in January 2026: visitors pay to enter, and the value converts into a book purchase.

Restoration followed. English Wikipedia says that on 21 April 2016 the graffiti artists Mr. Dheo and Pariz One covered the scaffolding with a mural of old books, a candle, a bottle of Port and geometric shapes echoing the stained glass, and that on 31 July 2016 the facade was uncovered in its recovered original grey. Forbes Portugal reported that twelve layers of paint were removed to reach that colour, and that the restorers of the skylight left a small smiling emoji in the glass as a sign of the era of the work. The same article described new rooms named after The Little Prince and José Saramago. Portuguese Wikipedia says the Fundação Livraria Lello was announced in 2024. Its staircase was long linked to Harry Potter, but Observador reported on 21 May 2020 that J. K. Rowling wrote that she had never visited the shop and that it had nothing to do with Hogwarts.

For 2026, Forbes Portugal reported a planned expansion designed by the architect Álvaro Siza Vieira and a podcast, Palavrão, hosted by Magda Cruz; Portuguese Wikipedia says the new wing, with an auditorium, opened in the 120th-anniversary year.

For a design guide, Livraria Lello shows how a bookshop can let its architecture carry the identity, from painted facade lettering and a Latin motto in the skylight to a red staircase, while a simple voucher keeps the building working as a shop. Compare El Ateneo, a Buenos Aires bookshop in a former theatre, and Shakespeare and Company, a Paris shop whose name and customs carry its story. For this guide we use staircase red, skylight gold and facade grey with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Livraria Lello’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.