BABELL is a new literary festival held in Porto and promoted by Fundação Livraria Lello, coinciding with the 120th anniversary of Livraria Lello, one of the world’s most iconic bookstores.

The festival transforms Porto into a city dedicated to literature, with events taking place across public squares, libraries, theatres, cinemas and other cultural venues.

To make access to these events as seamless as possible, Clorian Ticketing developed the technology that enabled visitors to redeem the codes received when purchasing books for tickets to the festival’s different activities.

This project demonstrates how a ticketing platform can bring together culture, local commerce and technology to deliver a better experience for both visitors and event organisers.

Culture Is Finding New Ways to Connect with People

Technology is transforming the way we experience culture. Today, the visitor journey begins long before someone enters a museum, exhibition or festival—it starts when they discover an event, book a ticket or engage with a cultural initiative.

In this context, ticketing platforms have become an essential tool for enhancing the visitor experience, streamlining event operations and making culture more accessible.

This was one of the core principles behind BABELL, Porto’s new literary festival.

Created by Fundação Livraria Lello to mark the 120th anniversary of Livraria Lello, the festival aims to turn the entire city into an open space for literature and culture.

Although BABELL was born as part of this celebration, it goes far beyond the historic bookstore. It is a city-wide cultural project that brings literature closer to new audiences through a programme spread across multiple locations throughout Porto.

What Is BABELL?

BABABELL is a literary festival held in Porto with the goal of promoting reading, encouraging book purchases and bringing literature closer to the public through a programme distributed across multiple cultural venues.

Unlike many literary festivals, BABELL does not concentrate all its activities in a single venue. Instead, it transforms the city itself into a cultural stage where literature meets people wherever they are.

Festival activities take place across Porto, including:

• Public squares and avenues
• Libraries
• Theatres
• Cinemas
• Bookstores
• Cultural venues and institutions throughout the city

This distributed format encourages greater public participation and turns culture into an open, accessible and city-wide experience.

The festival’s first edition also coincided with a significant milestone for Livraria Lello’s cultural ecosystem: the opening of new spaces developed together with Fundação Livraria Lello, including a new exhibition gallery inaugurated with an exhibition by Ai Weiwei, the Manifesto Room, created in collaboration with Dua Lipa as a space dedicated to reading and reflection, a new retail store, and the Fundação Livraria Lello Garden, designed as a new cultural meeting place for the city.

The Challenge: An Experience That Begins with Buying a Book

One of BABELL’s most innovative features was its access model, designed to connect book purchases with participation in the festival’s cultural programme.

Visitors who bought a book from any participating bookstore received a code that could later be redeemed for a ticket to attend talks, author meetings and other literary events held across the city.

This model encourages reading, supports local booksellers and makes culture more accessible, while also creating a significant operational challenge.

Because the festival takes place across multiple venues, organisers needed to coordinate visitor access, manage ticket availability, monitor capacity for every activity and ensure a smooth experience from the moment a code was redeemed until visitors entered each event.

Behind what appears to be a simple visitor journey lies a robust technology infrastructure capable of managing code redemption, ticket issuance and access control quickly, securely and without friction for both visitors and organisers.

Clorian Ticketing’s Role in BABELL

Clorian Ticketing is a ticketing platform specialising in museums, monuments, festivals, parks, heritage sites and other cultural institutions, designed to manage the entire visitor access journey.

For the first edition of BABELL, Clorian partnered with Fundação Livraria Lello to develop the technology that managed the redemption of codes distributed through participating bookstores and converted them into tickets for the festival’s different events.

Thanks to this solution, visitors were able to access the programme easily, while organisers benefited from a centralised platform to manage attendance and control access across all venues.

The solution developed by Clorian Ticketing enabled the festival to:

• Automate the code-to-ticket redemption process.
• Simplify visitor access to every festival activity.
• Centralise festival operations within a single platform.
• Streamline access control and capacity management at every venue.
• Reduce manual processes for the organising team.
• Provide centralised attendance data across the entire festival.

When technology works seamlessly in the background, visitors simply enjoy a smooth, hassle-free experience, while organisers benefit from greater efficiency, control and better decision-making.

Why Is a Ticketing System Essential for a Cultural Festival?

Ticket management is no longer just an administrative task.

Today, cultural organisations need platforms that enable them to:

• Sell tickets online.
• Manage bookings and group reservations.
• Monitor venue capacity in real time.
• Distribute invitations and promotional offers.
• Collect attendance and visitor behaviour data.
• Enhance the visitor experience before, during and after the event.

These capabilities help organisations optimise operations while delivering a far more efficient experience for both visitors and event organisers.

Clorian’s Expertise in Cultural Ticketing

At Clorian Ticketing, we develop technology solutions for museums, monuments, festivals, exhibitions, heritage sites and other cultural venues looking to manage visitors more efficiently.

Our platform brings together every stage of the visitor journey in a single solution, including:

• Online ticket sales.
• Reservations and bookings.
• Access control.
• Capacity management.
• Promotional campaigns.
• Distribution partners and sales channels.
• Timed-entry experiences.
• Visitor analytics and insights.

Every project has its own unique requirements, but they all share one common objective: making culture more accessible through technology that works behind the scenes to deliver a simple, intuitive experience for both visitors and organisers.

Culture, Innovation and Collaboration

Projects like BABELL demonstrate how collaboration between cultural institutions, event organisers and technology companies can create richer and more engaging experiences for audiences.

The combination of Livraria Lello’s legacy, the vision of Fundação Livraria Lello, and a festival spread throughout the city represents a new way of bringing culture to people—more open, more participatory and more closely aligned with visitors’ expectations.

At Clorian, we believe technology should serve culture, helping museums, monuments, festivals and heritage sites deliver memorable visitor experiences from the very first interaction through to event entry.

We will continue working alongside our clients to develop solutions that simplify event management and help bring culture closer to more people.