10 largest bookstores in Europe in 2025 - Featured

The Largest Bookstores in Europe

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Europe’s biggest bookstores are small by world standards. The largest, in Berlin, has a little over 7,000 m² of sales space; the largest bookstore in the world, in Shenzhen, occupies a building of about 131,000 m² (see The 10 Largest Bookstores in the World). What Europe has instead is a handful of large city-centre flagships, several of them more than a century old, and a long tail of shops that are famous for their history or architecture rather than their size.

Largest bookstores in Europe

How this list is ranked. Stores are ranked by the floor area published by the store or by reliable reports, and each entry says what the figure covers. Large stores with no reliable published figure are listed separately rather than given a guessed place. Smaller landmark shops, such as Livraria Lello in Porto and Shakespeare and Company in Paris, are famous for other reasons and are not included.

1. Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus, Berlin, Germany

More than 7,000 m² of sales space, five floors

Opened on Friedrichstraße in 1997 with 4,700 m², Dussmann had grown to more than 7,000 m² across five floors by the 2010s. It sells books, audiobooks and sheet music alongside music, film and stationery, and has an English & International Bookshop; for its 25th anniversary in 2022 it called itself Germany’s largest media department store. In May 2026 it announced a second, smaller shop of about 1,500 m² in the KaDeWe department store.

2. Waterstones Piccadilly, London, UK

About 6,160 m² (66,317 sq ft), six floors

Often described as Europe’s largest bookshop, Waterstones’ flagship occupies a 1930s building on Piccadilly, with more than eight miles of shelving and over 200,000 titles. A floor-by-floor refurbishment began in 2023.

3. Furet du Nord, Lille, France

About 4,000 m² of sales space

Furet du Nord opened on Lille’s Grand’Place in 1959 with 200 m², moved to larger premises in 1976 and again in 1991, and is still one of the largest bookstores in France. Its building on the square was sold in 2017; the company said the sale would not affect the shop, which reported about 4,000 m² of sales space at the time.

4. Foyles, Charing Cross Road, London, UK

About 3,440 m² (37,000 sq ft), eight shop floors

Foyles moved into its current flagship at 107 Charing Cross Road in June 2014: eight shop floors across a four-storey building, with around four miles of shelving and more than 200,000 titles. Its old shop next door once held a Guinness record for the longest shelving of any bookshop. Waterstones bought Foyles in 2018 and has kept the name.

5. Librairie Mollat, Bordeaux, France

About 2,700 m²

Founded in 1896 and on rue Porte-Dijeaux since 1928, Mollat has long ranked among France’s top three bookstores in the trade magazine Livres Hebdo’s annual ranking, with around 180,000 titles in stock.

6. Cărturești Carusel, Bucharest, Romania

More than 1,000 m², six levels

Opened in 2015 after a five-year restoration of a historic building in Bucharest’s old town, Cărturești Carusel spreads more than 1,000 m² over six levels and stocks over 10,000 volumes.

7. Blackwell’s, Broad Street, Oxford, UK

At least 930 m² (10,000 sq ft) in a single room

Blackwell’s Oxford shop has no published total floor area, but its underground Norrington Room alone covers 10,000 sq ft, with about three miles of shelving, and earned a Guinness record as the largest single room selling books.

Big, but unmeasured

  • Moscow House of Books (Dom Knigi), Novy Arbat, Moscow. Opened in 1967 and described as the largest bookstore in the former Soviet Union, but published figures for its size range from 4,500 m² to 27,000 m², so it is not ranked.
  • Biblio-Globus, Moscow. A three-level store near Lubyanka, open since 1957, which Publishers Weekly has described as one of Europe’s biggest bookstores; no reliable floor area has been published.
  • Palác knih Luxor, Prague. On Wenceslas Square, described by Czech Television as the largest bookstore in the Czech Republic.
  • Casa del Libro, Gran Vía, Madrid. Opened in 1923 as the Palacio del Libro, it remains the flagship of a chain of more than 60 shops across Spain.
  • Akateeminen Kirjakauppa, Helsinki. Akateeminen and its three sister shops passed to the Swedish bookseller Adlibris in January 2026; its range had already shrunk from as many as 140,000 titles to about 20,000.

Size is no guarantee

In May 2026 Milan lost Libreria Hoepli, a six-floor shop of about 2,000 m² near Piazza Meda, stocking around half a million books. The company’s shareholders voted in March to put it into liquidation, and the shop closed on 27 May after 156 years, with its building reported to be up for sale. Together with the sale of Furet du Nord’s building and Akateeminen’s change of owner, it is a reminder that a large bookstore’s future often depends on property and ownership decisions as much as on its readers.

Sources

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