Montolieu, France, Is a Town for Guide Fans

Set concerning two rivers in the foothills of the Black Mountains, the town of Montolieu has all the dreamy trappings of French country lifetime. I arrived from London around breakfast time to discover empty lanes that ran by means of tiny plazas to a huge buttressed Gothic church. Picket shutters in cornflower blue and poppy pink echoed the colors of the region’s wildflowers. But all around 10 a.m., gears shifted. Shutters opened and trestle tables laden with textbooks commenced to multiply in the streets. Browsers arrived and commenced sifting by way of the volumes.

While other villages in this region relaxation on their charming, sleepy laurels, Montolieu has expended the earlier 30 years setting up a fizzing arts neighborhood. Though it has just 821 inhabitants — and no ATMs — the city is extraordinary for its 16 bookstores, a lot more than 20 public and non-public artwork studios, and a cosmopolitan population that hails from around the world. (For the duration of my pay a visit to, term on the road was that an Israeli pop star experienced just lately bought a home there.) 

It all started off in 1990, when Michel Braibant, a Belgian bookbinder who was residing in nearby Carcassonne, began encouraging collectors and tiny-organization house owners to open bookshops in Montolieu and, later on, helped increase resources to make the Musée des Arts et Métiers du Livre, a place dedicated to the follow of bookbinding. (Braibant was reportedly encouraged by Hay-on-Wye, a city in Wales with a very similar bibliophile aim.) 

To study additional about everyday living in the village, I met hoteliers Bart and Marieke de Jonge in the cypress garden of La Manufacture Royale (doubles from $163) above glasses of Blanquette de Limoux, a local sparkling wine. The de Jonges, who are from the Netherlands, transformed an 18th-century linen mill into a high-style and design apartment constructing with suites 20 a long time in the past. The Dure River babbled underneath my window at night time, and at breakfast the hallways were laced with the heady scent of nutmeg. 

The property is an echo of Montolieu’s previous. Lengthy just before the village embraced textbooks, the mill experienced a royal warrant from King Louis XV and produced some of France’s greatest linens. But manufacturing dwindled in the mid 20th century, and the city was silent right up until Braibant arrived. 

Right now, Montolieu’s streets sense like an open up-air library. At La Manufacture & Eclectic, a shop specializing in art and style publications, I talked to shopkeepers Sophie Chaverou and Sébastien Ducrocq. Ducrocq initially had two shops: a single in Montolieu and just one 55 miles away in the city of Toulouse. But more than time, the Montolieu outpost grew to become markedly extra profitable than its city sister site. In 2010, the couple moved to Montolieu whole-time, drawn by the place way of life and the village’s packed calendar of literary and arts events. “The group is complementary relatively than aggressive,” Ducrocq reported.

Just one of my other preferred bookstores was La Rose des Vents, which has a wooden-paneled façade the color of classic Bordeaux and charmingly haphazard columns of titles. Out front, I uncovered owner Marie-Hélène Guillaumot hunched over a motor vehicle trunk sorting via bins of guides whilst the seller fanned herself in the front seat, ready for a offer to be struck. Later, Guillaumot led me out the back doorway, down an alley, and into a cavernous warehouse where by she retains some 15,000 of her treasured tomes.

At the museum, I took a bookbinding workshop with Camille Grin, who is demanding stereotypes in a after traditionally male subject. On a mezzanine earlier mentioned almost two centuries’ really worth of outdated typesetting devices, we reduce, glued, and punched holes in cardboard and hand-marbled paper right before selecting coloured threads to bind our creations. “In bookbinding, as in life, we need to often go forward,” she explained, demonstrating with nimble fingers how to stitch the internet pages together. 

Through Montolieu, unexpected artistic touches held catching my eye. Marking the entrance to a single shop was a stack of textbooks run through with a sword, their pages warped from many years of sunshine and rain. Whimsical back-alley murals depicted library cabinets. Open doorways led to studios where artists cocooned themselves amid paintbrushes and stacked canvases. 

At Cave des Oliviers, a wine retailer, English operator Adrian Mould explained Montolieu’s distinctive atmosphere. “Historically this location was known to have people with an impartial mind-set,” he reported. I read that sentiment — We’re not like other French towns — time and once more. And I was glad it was not. This rural village has created its possess script.

4 Far more European Book towns

Hay-on-Wye, Wales

This village on the Wales-England border is renowned for its 10-working day literary pageant, held each and every May well, and its eclectic antiques stores.

Damme, Belgium

Just outdoors Bruges, this rather Flanders town hosts ebook fairs on the next Sunday of every month: on the Industry Square for the duration of the summer season and in the Town Hall in the course of the winter. 

Mühlbeck-Friedersdorf, Germany

Two neighboring villages north of Leipzig came jointly to form Germany’s first ebook village in the late 1990s. 

Fjærland, Norway

Every single spring and summer months, this glacier-fringed village on a fjord in the west of Norway destinations bookshelves at bus stops, cafés, and on a ferry quay. Go in June for the yearly festival.