“A room without books is like a body without a soul,” said Cicero. By that definition, The Literary Man Hotel in Óbidos is as ‘soulful’ as it gets. With more than 45,000 books occupying every inch of it, this is a bibliophile’s dream come true. There are books in the bedrooms, the walls of the lobby and the restaurant are lined by bookshelves, and even the wine cellar, which doubles as a spa, is stacked with books.

I arrive in Óbidos on a sunny late-winter day, and catch my first glimpse of it from the motorway — a compact hilltop town of whitewashed houses with terracotta roof tiles, a bone-white church spire jutting skyward, all of this enclosed by a fortified wall with turrets and a castle at the very top.

At the tourist office just outside the Porta da Vila (main town gate), I meet Nuno Miguel Santos, who works for the town hall and is my guide. Óbidos is a picturesque town of narrow cobbled streets flanked by white houses with indigo-blue or canary-yellow borders. Unruly bougainvillea branches spread over the walls of some houses, while others are decorated with pots of flowers.

In 2015, when Unesco named Óbidos a City of Literature, it was one among only 20 cities in the world to receive this honour. “Everyone should have free access to books and that’s what the town hall is trying to do. The idea is to take spaces that we usually don’t associate with literature and to creatively transform them into bookshops,” says Santos.

We walk into the market, where fresh produce such as Portugal’s native pêra rocha pears mingle with books on gastronomy and wine, and travel books are stacked next to olive oil bottles and marmalade jars. This is Livraria de Mercado, where wooden crates that once held fruits and vegetables, are now nailed to walls and display rows of books.

The Óbidos Literary Town project started in 2013 as a partnership between the town hall and the Ler Devagar bookshop in Lisbon. The latter repurposes spaces that have fallen into disuse into contemporary bookshops.

Case in point is our next stop — the Grande Livraria de Santiago, right next to the entrance of the hilltop castle. The Church of Santiago was built in the 13th century but was completely destroyed in the great earthquake of 1755 (which also flattened most of Lisbon). A new church, built in 1772, was in use till a few years ago. Ler Devagar converted the space into a two-level bookshop — instead of pews, the centre of the church holds tall bookshelves, and a sweeping wooden staircase leads up to a mezzanine that displays more titles. There are bestselling novels, art books, noir fiction, travel guides, and so on.

The chapel holds more books, and the marble altar too displays novels — the erstwhile church is now a temple to the written word.

There are a handful of other such repurposed bookshops in Óbidos, such as a defunct bus-stop-turned-bookshop next to the 16th-century aqueduct, or the Livraria da Adega, a wine cellar that also sells books.

The Literary Man Hotel is relatively new, opened in late 2015, and fits in with the town’s literary project. Right from the lobby, up the stairs, and in the rooms — at every turn there’s a wall stacked with books.

The restaurant with its vaulted ceiling, thick pillars, incandescent lighting, and wall-to-wall books, seems more like a library. There are books in my room, including an arrangement around the futon-style bed. Most of these are in English, and I flip through a page-turner before calling it a night. I leave Óbidos the next day, clutching a historical novel — a memento from a town where the book is the main character.

Prachi Joshiis a Mumbai-based travel and food writer

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