El Ateneo Grand Splendid: Buenos Aires Travel Guide (4.8★)

A theatre that kept its bones

Stand on the old orchestra floor and look up. Three tiers of curved balconies wrap around you, their railings still gilded. Above them the domed ceiling fresco by the Italian painter Nazareno Orlandi shows an allegory of peace, painted in the years after the First World War.

The Grand Splendid opened as a theatre in 1919. It later became a cinema, and in 1929 it was among the first halls in the city to screen films with sound. In 2000 it became a bookshop. The stalls went, and low bookcases now fill the floor in rows.

The conversion kept the important parts:

• The stage, red curtains still drawn back, now holds a café
• The private boxes, kept as small reading nooks with armchairs
• The balconies, lined with shelves you can climb to and browse
• The proscenium arch and its carved plasterwork

Most of the stock is in Spanish. Upstairs there is a smaller English section, plus a big run of music, art books and children’s titles.

Finding it on Avenida Santa Fe

The address is Av. Santa Fe 1860, just off the Callao corner. This is one of the city’s main shopping streets, and from the pavement the place looks like any other storefront until you walk in.

The nearest Subte stop is Callao station on Line D, a few blocks’ walk along Callao. Recoleta Cemetery is roughly a 15-minute walk north, so the two pair well in one morning or afternoon. Allow 45 minutes to an hour, longer if you take a table on the stage.

Timing around the crowds

Very large numbers of people visit, and the crowd data is clear. On weekdays it is quietest between 9am and 10am. On weekends it is quietest from 9am to 12pm, which in practice means Saturday, because Sunday doors currently open at noon.

Don’t come between 12pm and 8pm on a weekend. That’s when the main floor fills and the balcony railings get a line of people waiting to take the overhead shot. At the moment it closes at 9pm every day. Weekday evenings are a fair backup if mornings don’t work for you.

Browsing, sitting and photographing

The staff run it as a working bookshop, not a museum, and it helps to treat it that way.

• Photos are fine. Skip the flash and don’t block the aisles for long. The best wide shot of the dome and stage is from the upper balcony, straight across from the stage.
• The boxes are for reading. Take a book in and sit down. Don’t set up a photo shoot there while someone is waiting.
• The stage café has table service. Ordering something is how you earn the seat, so don’t camp at a table without buying.
• Paying: cards are widely accepted at the tills. Prices are printed on the books and the café menu.
• Ask in Spanish: “¿Tienen libros en inglés?” gets you pointed to the English shelves.

Buying even one thing is the easy way to thank the place. Good picks are a slim Borges paperback or a tango CD from the music section, which suit the building.