MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

When critic Bob Mondello is not soaking up films at a cinema, you'll often find him browsing at a bookstore, especially when he travels. Well, recently, in Portugal, he visited a bookshop that he thought combined both of these enthusiasms. Turned out he was wrong - but he sent us back an audio postcard anyway.

BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: For a country where more than two-thirds of the population could neither read nor write 100 years ago, Portugal today feels awash in books. What's billed to be the world's oldest bookshop is in Lisbon, and what could be its most popular, is a few hours north in the city of Porto - Livraria Lello, where people buy advance tickets and start lining up at 9:00 a.m. to get in. Two blocks away, I'm already sensing a carnival atmosphere, both crowds and entertainers, including...

NOBODY: Nobody. My name is Nobody.

MONDELLO: ...Who has live birds perched on a pipe organ.

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MONDELLO: There's also a guitarist who barely looks up from her instrument, ice cream vendors - all catering to bookstore visitors, including Holly Friedlander.

HOLLY FRIEDLANDER: From New Zealand - and I just moved over to London 'cause I finished my degree.

MONDELLO: And why is she here?

FRIEDLANDER: My mum used to work in Portugal a lot. She loves all the blue tiles, so...

MONDELLO: I thought you might say something about "Harry Potter."

FRIEDLANDER: No. Is it in "Harry Potter"? I just rewatched all the "Harry Potters," and this is news to me, that I'm in "Harry Potter" land.

MONDELLO: She's not, as Lello bookseller Beatriz Marinho told me once I and the 200 other people admitted this half-hour got inside the ornately carved gothic facade.

BEATRIZ MARINHO: Welcome to the most beautiful bookshop in the world.

MONDELLO: That is not an overstatement. In addition to floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, this shop, opened in 1906 by the brothers Lello, boasts intricate plasterwork, art, a glowing stained-glass ceiling two stories up, all of which might as well be invisible at first because...

MARINHO: ...The focus - it's the staircase.

MONDELLO: A sort of double helix on steroids, the steps painted bright crimson swirling upward, seemingly unsupported by beams or pillars.

MARINHO: Shall we go upstairs?

MONDELLO: This staircase is the source of what Marinho calls the "Harry Potter" myth that I had so gullibly swallowed. Back in the 1990s, J.K. Rowling taught English in Porto, and a rumor got started that she'd been inspired by Lello's interior when she conjured Hogwarts' library and the Flourish and Blotts bookstore in the novels and that the film designers had followed her lead.

MARINHO: On one of the books - I think it's in the first one - there's a description of a staircase.

MONDELLO: There were 142 staircases at Hogwarts, reads that passage in "Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's Stone" - wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to...

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MONDELLO: ...Jump.

MARINHO: And people just make this connection with our staircase and with the "Harry Potter" story.

MONDELLO: Rowling since tweeted that she never went inside Lello, but myths die hard, and for a time, this one created a logistics problem.

MARINHO: People just come inside, took a picture and went outside, so no one bought books.

MONDELLO: The store instituted an admission fee, deductible if you make a purchase, and now there are not just lines to get in, but checkout lines, too. For non-Potterheads, there's a room devoted to Portugal's Nobel Prize winner, Jose Saramago...

MARINHO: We are also a museum.

MONDELLO: ...And in partnership with Time Magazine, a cover art exhibit called What Makes a Nobel. Also, a subterranean book depository, where Marinho points to whole shelves of first editions...

MARINHO: "The Wizard Of Oz," "Pinocchio," "Little Prince," "Pride And Prejudice," "Tom Sawyer," "Peter Pan"...

MONDELLO: ...Not to mention...

MARINHO: ..."Alice In Wonderland."

MONDELLO: ...A trove of Bob Dylan letters purchased at auction when he won his Nobel - which is to say, there's plenty to see and read and wrap your head around at the Lello bookstore in Porto, even if the street outside didn't inspire Diagon Alley. I mean, it's crooked enough, but, well - I'm Bob Mondello.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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