Five destinations for traveling readers

If you devour books and are passionate about traveling, join us on a route through different cities linked to literature. In them, the bookstores, cafes, libraries and cultural centers are places of worship and hallmarks of the city. We discover five destinations for traveling readers where you can live experiences that bring you closer to your favorite authors and works.

What do you think about going through streets and corners that the protagonists of your bedside books have trodden on? Or know the home of those you love as they write? Or the cafes they frequented? There are numerous cities that keep precious literary memories among their stones or have served as inspiration to classic and modern writers. We cannot collect all of them in one post, but we can select five destinations for traveling readers that fascinate us.

Literary cities

The importance that these cities have acquired encouraged Unesco to include them in the Creative Cities Network. A project that began in 2004 with the aim of preserving the literary tradition in the world. Among those chosen, three have the title of Ciudad Literaria, but there are many more, including two Spaniards. Did you know that Granada and Barcelona have been part of this network since 2014 and 2015, respectively?

1.- Edinburgh, Scotland

It could not be otherwise. The first of the five destinations for traveling readers is the Scottish capital, the first to obtain the Unesco title. Literature is breathed in its streets and also among its citizens. Its International Book Festival is the largest on the planet and every August brings together close to a thousand writers. The city comes alive with readings, conferences, exhibitions and events for the little ones. It has also hosted the celebration of one of the most prestigious English-speaking literary awards: the International Booker Prize.

It is a pleasure to walk its streets and discover the more than 50 bookstores, including the oldest known mobile library, inaugurated in 1725. In its old cafes, the author of the Harry Potter saga, JK Rowling, wrote the first pages of the well-known series.

Without a doubt, Edinburgh is a literary powerhouse. It is the birthplace of three literary greats: Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes and his inseparable Dr. Watson; Walter Scott, considered the pioneer of the historical novel with his work Ivanhoe; and Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote Treasure Island, with which he has awakened the love of reading in many adolescents or his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde who say gestures in three intense days after a night nightmare. Closer in time, Ian Rankin has given us his incorrigible and taciturn inspector Rebus.

Traveling readers can’t miss:

• the historic National Library of Scotland and its cozy cafe
• the Scottish Poetry Library housed in one of Scotland’s finest modern buildings
• The Writers’ Museum, which honors three Scottish writers (the poet Robert Burns, Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson) in a historic house from 1622
• the Scottish Storytelling Centre, where you can enjoy readings, theatrical and musical performances, festivals and literary-themed exhibitions
• the visit of the residence of Robert Louis Stevenson
• the settings where JK Rowling brought  Harry Potter to life
• the monument to Sir Walter Scott
• Waverley railway station, which is the only one in the world named after a novel

2.- Iowa, United States

The low-key Midwestern city was the third City of Literature to be added to the UNESCO list in 2008. Its university was the state’s gift to the city when, in 1857, it was decided that Des Moines would be the new capital. In it, the first Master of Creative Writing in the United States was created in 1936, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and it has the honor of having been the study center where 25 Pulitzer Prize winners have been trained. Many of them are honored on a ‘walk of fame’.

The former Iowa state capital hosts an annual book fair and literary contests. It has become a fascinating cultural destination to enjoy a literary walk, museums, theaters and festivals. Among the events related to writing, the Iowa City Book Festival or the One Book Two Book aimed at children to recognize their literary talent stand out.

In addition, it has one of the most emblematic bookstores in the United States, the independent Prairie Lights, which is attended by clients such as the former president of the country Barack Obama. It is located in the space where a local literary society housed poets such as Langston Hughes and EE Cummings in the 1930s.

Many of the residents of Iowa City are linked to the university, in fact some of the best contemporary North American authors such as Flannery O’Connor, John Irving, Ann Patchett, Raymond Carver or Curtis Sittenfeld, among others, lived there.

Traveling readers can’t miss:

• Casa Dey, home of the writing workshop, to visit its library and archives or attend a student reading
• the University of Iowa Museum of Art and its interesting exhibits
• the old Capitol building to explore the place where the government once met.
• the City Plaza, a pedestrian area also known as the Ped Mall with live music almost every weekend
• the Literary Walk on Iowa Avenue with plaques dedicated to 49 renowned writers
• the Little Free Libraries, small public book depositories for children to exchange books
• the Iowa Book Fair, if you travel in summer, which brings together the most prestigious international authors
• the Englert theater hall, dating from 1912 and renovated in 2004 to host live performances by internationally renowned artists and local talent
• the Haunted Bookstore, which is the oldest in the city in the sale of second-hand books. You can find more than 50,000 used, rare and out-of-print books stacked on shelves that go from floor to ceiling.
• the Java House, a chain of local coffee shops that offers readings and art exhibitions

3.- Buenos Aires, Argentina

If the Parisian cafes and bistros on the left bank of the Seine and around the Luxembourg Gardens became the second residence of the great writers of the 19th and 20th centuries, on the other side of the pond, Buenos Aires took over. The city of cafes and intellectuals is the third of the five destinations for traveling readers.

The port city is one of the great cultural exponents of Latin America. Not only is it the metropolis with the most theaters in the world, it has 140 public and private museums, libraries and convenes the largest Spanish-speaking International Book Fair. For three weeks, a million visitors come to the event to enjoy the literary offer and talks by prestigious writers and scientists.

But the literary cafes shine with their own light in this cultural scene. They are the meeting place in the daily and literary life of Buenos Aires. Cortazar, Borges or Bioy Casares drank from this city in their writings. The Bar London is the setting where Cortazar begins and concludes his work Los premios. Borges did not miss every Saturday from 11 at night until dawn at the legendary Cafe La Perla del Once, converted into a pizzeria in 2017. Bioy Casares was a regular at La Biela and always occupied table number 20, where he reflected and he wrote and was often accompanied by his friend Borges. Today, a sculpture of both continues to occupy that table.

Literature and coffee come together in such a way that the bookstores also include both proposals: books and coffee. Classical and Modern, Margot, El Ateneo or Eterna Cadencia are emblematic examples. In the latter it is common to find amateur writers reciting poems in the cafe in the main hall, where buyers can sit down to read, eat and chat.

Traveling readers can’t miss:

• the El Ateneo bookstore (in the first image of the post), which was originally a theater and today houses a gigantic bookstore. In its old setting you can enjoy a delicious coffee while you read
• Cafe Tortoni, a mecca for the Buenos Aires intelligentsia. Founded in 1858, numerous literary gatherings between journalists, writers and prominent poets such as Allende Iragorri were organized there.
• Villa Ocampo, located in San Isidro about 20 kilometers from the center of Buenos Aires. The writer Victoria Ocampo lived here, who had personalities such as Malraux, Ortega y Gasset, Camus and Huxley as guests. You can visit the library, rooms and the room where they met.

4.- Saint Petersburg, Russia

Museums, aristocratic palaces, beautiful parks, majestic temples and magnificent monuments make up the most famous image of the city. For this reason, it is known as the ‘open-air museum’ or the ‘city of the muses’. But, Piter, as its inhabitants colloquially call it, is also a literary city in which its future is intertwined with the life and work of Russian writers. Poets and writers like Pushkin, Dostoyevski, Nabokov, Lermontov, Blok or Yeseni are linked to what is considered one of the most beautiful cities on the planet.

Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s leading poet, lived in the city for most of his life. Also, Nikolai Gogol, poet and playwright who satirized tsarist culture and was an inspiration for the greats of the later generation: Turgenev, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.

The beautiful city was also the cradle of the Silver Age of Russian literature, where Blok and the couple Nikolai Gumiliov and Anna Akhmatova stand out. The poet Gumiliev was shot and the couple’s son, the historian Lev Gumiliev, was tried and imprisoned. Anna Akhmatova’s second husband was the art specialist Nikolai Punin, who was also tried and died in the Stalinist concentration camps. Despite everything, she became one of the most renowned poets of the 20th century.

Sergei Dovlatov, considered one of the most important Russian literati of recent years, also lived in St. Petersburg, where his family moved when he was a child. Frustrated by the lack of freedom, he emigrated in 1979 to New York. One of his most famous works, The Suitcase, tells of the items he chose to take with him when he decided to leave the USSR. He passed away at the age of 48 and today his talent is recognized in Russia. Joseph Brodsky, a Nobel Prize winner for Literature who was born in St. Petersburg, had a similar journey and also had to flee. Despite his early death, he is considered one of the best poets of the last century.

Traveling readers can’t miss:

• the Pushkin house-museum located near the Royal Palace square
• the Literary Cafe, where Pushkin dined for the last time before dying in a duel
• Akhmatova’s house-museum, which was inaugurated in 1989 during Perestroika after 23 years since her death. You can appreciate the Soviet lifestyle where the kitchen was the place where intellectuals could chat freely
• the house where Dostoyevsky spent his last days (in the image) and wrote The Brothers Karamazov. Six rooms have been recreated and personal objects are preserved
• Tikhvinskoe Cemetery, at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, where Dostoyevsky is buried
• the museum house of Nabokov, author of the controversial Lolita. The modernist building was the old family mansion and has a valuable exhibition located in the dining room, hall and library of the house

5.- Bucheon, South Korea

In 2017, Bucheon was incorporated as a UNESCO Literary City. It is the last of our selection of five destinations for traveling readers. Situated between Seoul and Incheon, the bustling city has been home to famous writers such as Mok Il-sin, Yang Gui-ja, Jeong Ji-yong, and Pearl S. Buck. The renowned American author wrote two novels set in South Korea and worked in this metropolis in the 1960s with the orphans of the Korean War.

Since 2006, the city has celebrated the Pearl Buck Festival. Other literary events it hosts include the Bucheon City Book Festival and the Suju Literary Festival, which celebrates the works of native poet Byeon Yeong-ro.

When you walk through the city it is common to find streets, bridges and commemorative parks that bear the name of one of the authors and poets mentioned. For example, Buck and Ji-yong have special literary trails that go through significant places in the city.

Literature and the activities developed around it have played a crucial role in the social development of the city. After being appointed as a Literary City, it has committed to guarantee greater access to books, to education and to sensitize the younger generations with programs and events to promote reading and children.