The BookTrib Brief: Our Love For Reading Never Takes a Vacation

Hello from Croatia!

Wherever I travel, I always try to find an independent bookstore to see what bookish magic is happening there — and readers, Croatia delivered.

We landed in Dubrovnik, dropped our bags, and dove straight into the heat for a 15-minute sun-soaked walk through the Old Walled City — which Game of Thrones fans would recognize as King’s Landing — 1,062 vertical steps, coming to nearly two miles of cobblestones and history. We finally collapsed onto a bench with ice-cold sparkling water, just soaking in the golden stone and centuries of stories all around us.

Next stop was Korcula, where there’s a lovely bookstore called Kutak Knjiga (“Book Corner”), located just outside the Old Town, at Hrvatske bratske zajednice 58. A few fun details are:

It was opened in 2014 by Joseph Le Corre, a Frenchman from Brittany, who later teamed up with Croatian journalist Dora Mikelić to run it.

It’s the only bookstore located on a Croatian island — which is a pretty great hook for a bookish travel post.

The shop stocks literature, travel books, translated Croatian and Balkan authors, novels set in Croatia, history, poetry, theater, and children’s books — in Croatian, French, English, German, Italian, Polish, and Czech.

It even hosts its own literary programming from time to time.

But the real treasure was waiting for us in Split. Tucked into Narodni Trg — the People’s Square, or “Pjaca” as locals call it — sits Croatia’s oldest bookstore, founded in 1860 by Vid Morpurgo.

Step inside and you’re stepping into living history; this little shop has weathered 1) the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 2) two World Wars, 3) the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 4) Socialist Yugoslavia, and now 5) an independent Croatia — over 150 years of turning pages through unimaginable change.

Today it stands as one of Split’s most beloved cultural landmarks, and quite possibly one of the oldest surviving bookstores in all of Europe. Thank goodness books really do outlast empires. Let’s keep that tradition going!!

Sending love and happy reading today from Montenegro.