Leiden was never meant to be a bookshop trip. I went for the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden on a grey Saturday, got rained on between the station and the Breestraat, and ducked into the first doorway with a dry floor and something to read. Two hours later I had a paper bag with three novels I had not planned to buy and a vague sense that the museum could wait. That happens to me a lot in this town. After writing up Amsterdam, Leiden felt like the obvious and much calmer next stop. Opening times are as I found them in September 2026; do check before you travel, because Dutch shops love a Monday afternoon start.
1. Mayflower Bookshop: the international bookshop
Breestraat 70 is where I dried off that first time, and it has become my default. Mayflower sells new and second-hand books side by side, mostly in English. The second-hand shelves are the part I like best: prices are fair, the stock turns over, and there is a three-for-two deal I have never once resisted. It also runs lecture series and reading groups, so some evenings it is more living room than shop. They opened a second branch on Lange Poten in The Hague in 2021, one more reason my Den Haag guide is overdue an update. Mondays they open at noon.
2. De Slegte: the second-hand and remainder shop
Almost directly opposite, at Breestraat 73, is De Slegte. If Mayflower is the living room, De Slegte is the attic of a well-read aunt: used books and ramsj, the Dutch word for remainders, restocked every day, which is why the regulars come in weekly. The English section is large by Dutch standards. I have found paperback thrillers for a couple of euros and a heavy art book I had no business carrying home on the train. Give yourself time here. Nothing is arranged for a quick in and out, and that is the point.
3. Boekhandel Kooyker: the proper bookshop
A few doors along at Breestraat 89 is Kooyker, the kind of established bookshop every university town needs. It leans academic, with serious non-fiction and the journals that go with a student population, but there is an English top ten by the till and the staff know their fiction. This is where I go for the new hardback rather than the lucky find, and where I check the events board: in autumn it fills up with children’s book week and the history month. Closed on Sundays, like most shops on this street.
4. De Boekenzolder: the free book attic
This one is outside the centre, on the Admiraal Bankertweg, and it is the place I tell people about first. De Boekenzolder is a charity run entirely by volunteers, and every book in it is free. You browse an attic’s worth of donated books in Dutch, English and a surprising range of other languages, and take up to ten stamped copies home. Donations are welcome, and I always leave some, because the alternative is that this place disappears. It is only open Thursday to Saturday afternoons, one until half past four, with a handful of closing days through the year, so plan the visit. Bring a bag. Bring a bigger bag than you think.
5. Bibliotheek Leiden: the public library with a coffee bar
When I have bought too much and need to sit down, I walk to Nieuwstraat 4. The central library is run by BplusC, which bundles it with a music school and cultural centre, so the building is busier and more mixed than a library usually is. There are work tables with free wifi and a small coffee bar where I have read half a novel over one flat white. Thursdays it stays open until nine, my favourite time: the students have thinned out and the building goes quiet. Sundays it is closed.
A walk between the shelves
The thing about Leiden is that the books do not stop at the shop doors. Since 1992 the city has painted more than a hundred poems on its walls, in Russian, Spanish, English, Chinese and many other languages, and once you know they are there you see them everywhere. It makes the town feel like it was built by readers, which, given the university has been here since 1575, it more or less was.
If you have done Amsterdam and Haarlem, put Leiden next. And if you know a shelf I have missed, I would like to hear about it. There is always room in the bigger bag.
