A Mexico City Cocktail Bar Hides Its Lounge Behind a Wall of Books
Walk down a staircase in Mexico City's Roma neighbourhood and you find yourself surrounded by books. They are not there to be read. Libreria Valladolid is a basement cocktail bar designed to feel like an old bookshop.
The bar sits beneath an early 20th-century house. The interior was designed by Em-Estudio, a studio co-founded by architect Ivan Esqueda and interior designer Gala Sánchez-Renero. According to Dezeen, the London-based design website that reported on the project on 31 October 2026, the designers took cues from the vintage bookstores of Roma and set out to recreate the feeling of browsing through used-book shops.
The bookish look is strongest on the larger walls. Shelves run across them, filled with books stacked spine-inwards, the narrow edge that normally shows a title. That turns every shelf into a row of page edges facing the room. The dark herringbone floor, a zigzag pattern of narrow blocks, and burgundy surfaces give the space a warm, deep-red base.
Gold leaf, which is beaten gold worked into sheets thinner than paper, and brass pick out the DJ booth, the bar counter and the bathrooms. Those metallic touches catch the light against the dark wood and red tones.
The most unusual feature is hidden in plain sight. One section of shelving is set up to disguise a door, and behind it sits a small lounge. Its ceiling is finished in a glossy green, and a long marble table runs down the middle of the room. Guests who do not know it is there could easily walk past the wall of books.
For anyone planning a visit, the bar is at Tabasco 321 in Roma Norte, according to its Instagram account. The account lists opening hours of 5pm to 2am from Tuesday to Saturday, and 3pm to midnight on Sunday. It describes the drinks on offer as classic cocktails.
The project shows how a bar can borrow its mood from a neighbourhood's older shops. The bookshelves do the work of a theme, but the layout, the lounge and the metal trim give each part of the bar its own character. Visitors who arrive looking for a drink may leave having spent most of the night looking at the walls.
