Livraria Lello and Harry Potter

What J.K. Rowling actually did in Porto

Joanne Rowling moved to Porto in 1991 to teach English at the Encounter language school, married the Portuguese journalist Jorge Arantes in 1992, had her daughter Jessica in 1993 and left for Edinburgh at the end of that year. The first chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone were written during those two years, much of it in the Majestic Café on Rua de Santa Catarina. The school was a short walk from Livraria Lello; the university students who still wear black capes and gowns in the streets around the bookshop are the ones usually credited with the Hogwarts uniform.

What she has said is less romantic. In 2020 Rowling wrote on social media that she had never visited Livraria Lello while she lived in Porto and that the bookshop had not inspired Hogwarts; the Flourish and Blotts bookshop of the novels, she said, came from nowhere in particular. The bookshop itself no longer claims a direct link in its own material, although the association is so strong that the queue has not noticed.

Why the connection stuck anyway

Stand at the foot of the staircase and the reason is obvious. The forked red stairs that rise, split and rejoin under a stained-glass skylight look like the moving staircases of Hogwarts; the carved wooden galleries, the busts of Portuguese writers and the bookshelves to the ceiling look like the set of a film that was in fact shot elsewhere. Add the capes outside and the Majestic Café two streets away, and the story writes itself. Tour guides started telling it in the 2000s, the Harry Potter films made the comparison visual, and by 2015 the bookshop was so crowded with visitors who bought nothing that it introduced the entry voucher.

• The red staircase, often called the Hogwarts staircase, is from the 1906 building by Xavier Esteves
• The stained-glass skylight carries the motto Decus in Labore, «dignity in work»
• The black capes are the traje académico of the University of Porto, worn to this day
• The Majestic Café, where Rowling wrote, is a ten-minute walk on Rua de Santa Catarina

What Harry Potter fans look for inside

The staircase is the photograph everyone wants, which is why the shop limits numbers per slot and why the first slot of the day is the only one with a clear shot. The rails and the tramway that once carried books along the floor are original; the ceiling that looks like carved wood is painted plaster, a trick of the 1906 decoration. On the upper floor the stained glass is closest, and the shop keeps a wall of Harry Potter editions in a dozen languages, which is where most of the vouchers get spent. There is no Harry Potter exhibition and no film prop; the shop is a working bookshop that happens to look like a set.

The ticket covers all of it. Every ticket is a voucher for a book, so a Harry Potter edition bought inside costs the price of the book minus the voucher. Opening hours, the voucher rules and the quiet hours of the day are on the opening hours page; the rest of the building, floor by floor, is on the what to see page.

Beyond the bookshop: the Porto of the books

A Harry Potter walk in Porto takes an afternoon. The Majestic Café on Rua de Santa Catarina still looks as it did in 1921. The Fonte dos Leões fountain by the university rectory, where the students gather in their capes, sits five minutes uphill from the bookshop. São Bento station, with its 20,000 azulejo tiles, is a five-minute walk the other way. None of it needs a ticket; only the bookshop does, and that one is worth booking for the first slot.

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