If the word bookstore brings to mind a place for a peaceful reading, you're in for a surprise. Lello welcomes over one million visitors a year and sells 1,200 books/day! The bookstore's origin, one of the oldest in Portugal and considered one of the most beautiful in the world, dates back to 1881 when the brothers José and António Lello opened the business. Later, they decided to build a new shop or, in other words, a literary salon for men of culture. Τhey entrusted the new bookstore's construction to the engineer Francisco Xavier Esteves, a literature enthusiast, who served the city of Porto as mayor and the Republican cause as politician. Its opening, in January 1906, was the highlight of 20th century Porto's cultural life, attracting extensive media coverage and attended by great literary figures. At the ceremony, the prominent writer and diplomat Abel Botelho gave a speech, praising the Lellos for erecting "a temple to the cult of ideas."