El Ateneo Grand Splendid
Interesting facts
- The painted dome, about 20 by 19 metres, is an allegory of peace that Nazareno Orlandi created in 1919 to celebrate the end of the First World War.
- One figure in the ceiling holds a film projector whose reel unwinds as a ribbon of peace, a tribute to the then-new art of cinema.
- Construction began in 1917 on the foundations of an earlier playhouse, the Teatro Nacional Norte.
- The auditorium rose in four tiers of boxes above the stalls, and those boxes now serve as reading corners.
- Carlos Gardel began recording for the Nacional Odeón label in 1920 in a studio Glücksmann set up inside the building; the room survives but is closed to the public.
- The bandleader Roberto Firpo dedicated a tango called "Gran Splendid" to the theatre in 1927.
- Radio Splendid's slanted antenna mast on the roof looked from the surrounding streets like a giant crane with its boom in the air.
- The conversion into a bookshop cost about 3 million dollars and took two months of design and six months of building work, opening on 4 December 2000.
- The store carries around 120,000 titles, and in 2008 it sold more than 700,000 books.
- Paperbacks are now sold in the spot where the theatre's ticket windows once stood.
Why it is worth it
Behind a stately façade on Avenida Santa Fe in Buenos Aires, a bookshop occupies an entire theatre. Shelves fill the old stalls and line the curving balconies tier upon tier, the private boxes have become reading nooks, and the stage – still framed by its crimson curtains – now holds a café. Overhead, the painted ceiling by the Italian artist Nazareno Orlandi floats above the whole hall. In 2019 National Geographic called El Ateneo Grand Splendid the most beautiful bookshop in the world; The Guardian had ranked it second in a 2008 list.
The building was designed by the architects Peró and Torres Armengol in an eclectic style for the impresario Max Glücksmann and opened as the Teatro Gran Splendid in May 1919, with caryatids by the sculptor Troiano Troiani. The house seated 1,050 and became a stage for tango: Carlos Gardel, Francisco Canaro, Roberto Firpo and Ignacio Corsini all performed here. From 1924 Glücksmann's Radio Splendid broadcast from the building, and his Nacional Odeón label recorded some of the early tango singers here. By the end of the 1920s the theatre had become a cinema, and in 1929 it screened the first sound films shown in Argentina.
In 2000 the building was leased by Grupo Ilhsa, owner of the El Ateneo and Yenny bookshop chains, and the architect Fernando Manzone adapted it as a book and music store, removing the cinema seats while keeping the ceiling, the carved ornament, the stage curtains and the auditorium lights. The result is a 2,000-square-metre shop that still reads, from the moment one steps into the stalls, as the grand theatre it was.
Getting there
El Ateneo Grand Splendid is in central Buenos Aires, on Avenida Santa Fe in the Barrio Norte district. The nearest airport is Aeroparque Jorge Newbery (AEP), about 4.5 km away; Ministro Pistarini International Airport at Ezeiza (EZE) handles most international flights.
Plan your visit
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Nearby places
- Recoleta Cemetery 0.9 km · cemetery
- Teatro Colón 1.2 km · opera-house
- Puente de la Mujer 3.0 km · bridge
- Caminito 5.6 km · pedestrian-street
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
El Ateneo Grand Splendid is a bookshop in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2008, The Guardian placed it as the second most beautiful bookshop in the world. In 2019, it was named the "world's most beautiful bookstore" by the National Geographic.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
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