Book lovers must make their way to the famous Powell's City of Books, a full city block packed with more than a million new and used books. From its humble beginnings in Chicago in 1971, Powell's has grown to be the largest bookstore of its kind in the world, expanding to include six other stores and a highly successful online store.
Visitors can lose themselves for hours among the shelves situated in nine color-coded rooms and containing over three thousand different sections, or get inspiration from the Pillar of Books, a nine-foot-tall sandstone sculpture depicting a stack of eight of the world's greatest books, each with its title carved in the original language. Powell's offers a packed schedule of visiting authors, poets, and artists, hosts a regular children's story hour, and donates more than fifty thousand books a year to local schools through the It's for Kids campaign. The World Cup Coffee and Tea House offers the perfect place to relax after a day in the stacks.
