El Ateneo Grand Splendid is a bookshop in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. In 2008, ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' 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''.

Overview

Situated on Santa Fe Avenue in Barrio Norte, the building was designed by architects Peró and Torres Armengol for impresario

Max Glücksmann Max Glücksmann, born (Mordechai David Glücksmann) (Czernowitz, Bukovina, Austrian Empire, March 8, 1875 - October 20, 1946, Buenos Aires, Argentina) was an Argentine pioneer of the music and film industries. Biography Glücksmann was born in Cze ...

(1875-1946), and opened as a theatre called ''Teatro Gran Splendid'' in May 1919. The eclecticist building features ceiling frescoes painted by the Italian artist

Nazareno Orlandi Nazzareno Orlandi (May 29, 1861 in Ascoli Piceno, Italy – 1952 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) was an Italian-Argentine painter. Early Years in Italy He studied design in Ascoli Piceno and then in the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, where he ...

and caryatids sculpted by Troiano Troiani, whose work also graces the cornice along the Palacio de la Legislatura de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. The theatre had a seating capacity of 1,050, and staged a variety of performances, including appearances by the

tango Tango is a partner dance and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. The tango was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries as the result of a combina ...

artists Carlos Gardel,

Francisco Canaro Francisco Canaro (November 26, 1888 – December 14, 1964) was a Uruguayan violinist and tango orchestra leader. Canaro was born in San José de Mayo, Uruguay, in 1888. His parents were Italian immigrants, and later, when he was less than 10 y ...

, Roberto Firpo and

Ignacio Corsini Ignacio Corsini (February 13, 1891 – July 26, 1967) was an Italian-born Argentine folklore and tango musician. Life and work Andrea Corsini, such his real name, was born in Troina, a village in the Enna Province of Sicily, in 1891. He was f ...

. Glücksmann started his own

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...

station in 1924 (''Radio Splendid''), which broadcast from the building where his recording company, ''Nacional Odeón'', made some of the early recordings of the great tango singers of the day. In the late twenties the theatre was converted into a cinema, and in 1929 showed the first

sound film A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...

s presented in Argentina. The ornate former theatre was leased by Grupo Ilhsa in February 2000. Ilhsa, through Tematika, owns El Ateneo and Yenny booksellers (totaling over 40 stores), as well as the El Ateneo publishing house. The building was subsequently renovated and converted into a book and music shop under the direction of architect Fernando Manzone; the cinema seating was removed and in its place book shelves were installed. Following refurbishment works, the El Ateneo Grand Splendid became the group's flagship store, and in 2007 sold over 700,000 books; over a million people walk through its doors annually. Customer seating has been installed throughout the building, including the still-intact theatre boxes, and a café has been created at the back of what was once the stage. The ceiling, the ornate carvings, the crimson stage curtains, the auditorium lighting and many architectural details remain. Despite the changes, the building still retains the feeling of the grand theatre it once was. ''

'', a prominent British periodical, named El Ateneo Grand Splendid second in its 2008 list of the world's ten best bookshops. In 2019, it was named the "world's most beautiful bookstore" by the '' National Geographic''.

Gallery

File:El Ateneo Bookstore.jpg, File:Ateneo Grand Splendid-interior 02-TM.jpg, File:El_Ateneo_Grand_Splendid_Bookshop,_Recoleta,_Buenos_Aires,_Argentina,_28th._Dec._2010_-_Flickr_-_PhillipC.jpg, File:Buenos Aires - Recoleta - El Ateneo ex Grand Splendid 1.JPG, File:Buenos Aires - Recoleta - El Ateneo ex Grand Splendid 2.JPG, File:El Ateneo bookstore (5459414085).jpg, File:El Ateneo bookstore (5459417727).jpg, File:El Ateneo bookstore (5459992642).jpg, File:El Ateneo bookstore (5460005854).jpg, File:El Ateneo bookstore (5459424377).jpg,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ateneo Bookstores of Argentina Buildings and structures in Buenos Aires Retail companies established in 2000 Theatres completed in 1919