Made world-famous by Hemingway, this century-old English-language bookshop is more than a bookstore, it is a real place to live.
It was home to most of the writers of the American avant-garde: Fitzgerald, Eliot, Pound, Ginsberg, Sillitoe, but also to film personalities such as Ethan Hawke or Darren Aronofsky. Sometimes even in the literal sense of the word, as it invited writers, artists and intellectuals to sleep among the stacks of books and shelves of the library, on beds that turned into benches during the day. In return, the guests, known as 'Tumbleweeds', had to perform three tasks: read one book a day, put the books away for a few hours a day, and provide a one-page autobiography.
Today, an estimated 30,000 writers and artists have spent one or more nights there, and the bookshop collects several thousand of these autobiographies.
Feel free to push open the door of Shakespeare and Co to browse through its shelves, or simply to soak up its atmosphere.