Shop windows celebrating 120 years of Livraria Lello inspired by Italo Calvino's ‘Invisible Cities’

To mark its 120th anniversary, Livraria Lello presents an artistic installation in its shop windows that translates, in form and material, its vision of culture as a force for transformation in the region.

Inspired by Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and the famous passage in which Marco Polo replies to Kublai Khan that ‘it is not the stones that support the bridge, but the arch they form’, the installation offers a symbolic interpretation of Livraria Lello's own history.

The central figure is a bridge, an unmistakable symbol of Porto and a metaphor for the connection between past and future, between the visible and the invisible, between the physical city and the imagined city. This bridge is built from blocks that evoke Porto granite — a material that is part of the city's identity — recreated in a light-hearted way, in a deliberate play between solid appearance and illusion.

At the base of the installation is the book. Not as a decorative object, but as a structural foundation: it is the book that supports the bridge, giving it its origin and meaning. Literature thus emerges as the foundation of the city, a silent but essential element that supports the greater arc of cultural transformation.

This display directly dialogues with the commemorative edition of Invisible Cities, launched as part of the celebrations of Livraria Lello's 120th anniversary in partnership with Dom Quixote, and with the blue installation covering the interior shelves. Exterior and interior form a single curatorial gesture, where design, architecture, and literature come together in the same narrative.

More than a celebration of the past, this installation is an announcement of the future. A literary arc that opens in 2026 and reaffirms Livraria Lello Porto as a living project — where books not only occupy the space, but sustain the city and reinvent the territory.