In 1870, the Swiss Ulrico Hoepli came upon Theodor Lengner’s bookstore in the De Cristoforis gallery in Milan and immediately identified the market niches not being served by Milanese publishing, including technical and scientific manuals. In next-to-no-time, Hoepli, too, became a publisher, and was appointed bookseller to the Royal Household. Having made it, not without difficulty, through the two world wars (the bombing raids destroyed the warehouse, the archive and the premises), in 1958 the Hoepli International Bookshop was opened at its current site. Designed by the architects Figini and Pollini, it originally covered two storeys but today extends to six.
