The painted ceiling
Over the bookshelves.
Andrzej Otrębski — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Andrzej Otrębski — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Roberto Fiadone — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Andrzej Otrębski — CC BY-SA 4.0
El Ateneo Grand Splendid is a bookshop inside an old theatre, named the world's most beautiful bookshop by National Geographic in 2019. The building opened as the Teatro Gran Splendid in May 1919, seating 1,050, where great tango singers such as Carlos Gardel performed; it later became a cinema that showed Argentina's first sound films in 1929. When it became a bookshop in 2000, the seats were removed and replaced by bookshelves, but everything that made it a theatre stayed: the painted ceiling, the carved decoration, the boxes, now reading nooks, and the great red curtain on the stage, now a café. More than a million people walk through its doors each year. Entry is free, and sitting in the boxes or the stage café is a pleasure; the upper floor gives the best view of the whole hall. Weekends are busy and mornings quieter.
Over the bookshelves.
Behind the red curtain.
Now reading nooks.
Avenida Santa Fe 1860, Barrio Norte
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