BOEKHANDEL DOMINICANEN, MAASTRICHT

 

‘Tourists come around nine in the morning to witness the opening of the doors. It has become a kind of ritual.’ 

Since British newspaper The Guardian called it ‘The finest bookshop of the world, a bookshop made in heaven’, Boekhandel Dominicanen receives a million visitors a year. The 13th-century church in Maastricht as the first Gothic church in the Low Countries, served all sorts of different functions before it became a bookshop in 2006: it was used as a depot for the city, a concert hall, slaughterhouse, a snake house, a boxing temple, a bicycle storage, and a carnival temple. Many locals had their first dances and their first kisses there. 

The bookstore is equally beloved by foreign visitors: ‘Tourists come by around nine in the morning to witness the opening of the doors. It has become a kind of ritual.’ Afterwards, the goal is to sell books, but the majestic surroundings seem to help with that too: ‘Once you’re on the second floor, you have a better view of the Baroque frescoes on the ceiling and you’re eight meters closer to heaven, which might inspire you to buy a book.’ 

As a bookseller in the Dominicans, you might wonder, ‘Will the saints bless us as they look down on us?’ ‘Well, if you look up at the ceiling you see three bishops, with the Bible open in their hands at the first line of the first chapter of John: In the beginning was the Word…. We are engaged with the Word all day long and we spread it. I think they would agree with us, yes.’