Mon banc dominical, my sunday bench...pre-booked!

Outside Shakespeare and Company, the benches are already spoken for, not by people but by books.

Wooden seats line the shopfront, temporarily claimed by boxes of paperbacks and hardbacks waiting for their next reader. In a way, they feel booked, or perhaps pre-booked, long before anyone sits down.

It’s a very Parisian kind of Sunday scene: literature spilling onto the pavement, pauses built around reading rather than rushing. Even the benches seem to take the day off, quietly holding stories instead of people.

Shakespeare and Company, one of Paris’s most recognisable literary landmarks. It has witnessed decades of readers, writers, and passers-by pausing just long enough to take in the scene.

Wee bit of history in this good article here.


Part of the “My Sunday Bench” series

Each Sunday, a bench somewhere in Paris, offering a quiet pause in the week and a front-row seat to everyday city life.

Browse the full series

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