Libreria Acqua Alta is Instagram famous. More than 30,000 people have tagged themselves visiting the enchanting bookstore, but unlike other popular buildings in Venice, Libreria Acqua Alta isn’t a church or canalside palazzo. It’s quintessentially Venice in another way: It’s designed to outsmart the floods that have plagued the city for centuries.
Inside you’ll find books on Venetian cuisine stacked within bathtubs. English and Italian fiction titles are wedged beside each other, packed tightly in a gondola stretching from one side of the cramped shop to the other. They aren’t just there to add atmosphere. When the Italian city floods, as it does dozens of times a year, the bathtubs and gondola float, safeguarding the books inside.
Libreria Acqua Alta gets its name from this phenomenon: Acqua Alta, which means “high water,” refers to the high tides from the Adriatic Sea that blow…