Some people plan trips around restaurants or museums. Designer Paula Flynn plans them around shops — and after a decade of documenting the world's best brick-and-mortars, she's turned that obsession into a book. The World's Most Beautiful Shops, from the founder of the directory website The Shopkeepers, rounds up 20 stores that she argues are destinations in their own right, each one shaped by the city it calls home.
Flynn's criteria are refreshingly unfussy. A great shop might have a historic storefront with decades of patina on the signage, or an obsessive focus on a single product, or — most importantly — a shopkeeper who gives you a reason to linger. The through-line in her selection is a sense of rootedness: shops that reflect local heritage and craft rather than importing a generic aesthetic you could find anywhere. In her words to Condé Nast Traveler, these are the places that give a location its character.
A couple of the 20 hint at the range on offer. In Lisbon, there's a candle shop with 237 years of history behind its counter — a business that has outlived empires, earthquakes and several versions of the city around it. In Istanbul, a townhouse has been transformed into a textiles museum-shop, blurring the line between retail and cultural institution. The full list spans every corner of the globe, and the book is positioned as a tribute to shopkeeping itself: an art form that Flynn believes will outlast any individual store.
That last point matters. Retail is fragile — rents rise, neighbourhoods shift, beloved storefronts close. But Flynn sees the book as a record of legacies rather than a static directory, something travellers and designers can keep returning to for inspiration even after specific shops change hands or shut down.
For anyone who has ever rearranged a city itinerary to fit in a visit to a legendary food hall, bookshop or hardware store, this is a very particular kind of travel inspiration. The shops featured here aren't souvenirs stops; they're the reason to book the trip. Expect the pieces themselves to be as varied as the places: heritage trades kept alive by families, single-product specialists who've spent generations perfecting one thing, and interiors where the building's own story is part of the merchandise.
Why should a traveller care? Because the best shopping trips are never really about what you buy. They're about stepping into a place where someone has poured decades — sometimes centuries — of skill into one very specific thing, and hearing the story straight from the person behind the counter. Flynn's 20 picks offer a ready-made list of exactly those encounters, whether you're already heading to Lisbon or Istanbul or looking for a reason to go.
If your travel style leans towards craft, history and human contact over checklist sightseeing, this book doubles as a route map. And even if you never make it to all 20, it's a good reminder to look up from the monument queue and notice the shop on the corner — it might be the most memorable stop of the day.
Story via Condé Nast Traveler.
