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houses. Offered as an option only on the 10am tour is the chance to visit the
private rooms of the
Cercle del Liceu
(€3 extra), the opera house’s members’
club. The highly decorative rooms are certainly worth seeing, inlaid with
burnished wood, and featuring tiled floors and painted ceilings, and culminating
in an extraordinary
modernista
games room, illuminated by a celebrated series of
paintings by Ramon Casas representing Catalan music and dance. For most of
its 160-year history the Cercle membership was restricted to men, until
challenged by
Montserrat Caballé
, who won a court battle to become one of
the first women to join.They could hardly refuse. Caballé was born in Barcelona
(1933), studied at the Liceu conservatory and made her Liceu debut in 1962,
later becoming widely acknowledged as Spain’s greatest soprano with a string
of extraordinary performances in the 1960s and 1970s.
Meanwhile, the traditional meeting place for post-performance refreshments
for audience and performers alike is the famous
Café de l’Opera
, just across
the Ramblas.
Rambla de Santa Mònica
After the Liceu, attractions just off the Ramblas include the Palau Güell down
c/Nou de la Rambla (El Raval) and, on the opposite side, the lovely Plaça Reial
(Barri Gòtic). Below here, the last named stretch is the
Rambla de Santa
Mònica
(
o
Drassanes), historically a theatre and red-light district that still has
a rough edge or two. Across from the Teatre Principal stands the lavish
monument to Frederic Soler
(1839–95), better known as Serafí Pitarra, the
playwright, impresario and founder of modern Catalan theatre. But for an
earthier memorial to the old days, walk down the Ramblas a little further to
the entrances to nos. 22 and 24 (by the
Amaya
restaurant), where the deep
depressions in the marble stoops were worn away by the heels of decades of
loitering prostitutes – the doorways now have protected city monument status.
Back across the Ramblas, street-walkers and theatre-goers alike drank stand-up
shots and coffee at
La Cazalla
(Ramblas 25), under the arch at the start of c/de
l’Arc del Teatre, a famous hole-in-the-wall bar (really just a street counter),
recently restored, that’s straight out of sleaze-era central casting.
On the same side, at no. 7, the Augustinian convent of Santa Mònica dates
originally from 1626, making it the oldest building on the Ramblas. It was
entirely remodelled in the 1980s and now houses the
Centre d’Art Santa
Mònica
(Tues–Sat 11am–8pm, Sun 11am–3pm; free;
T
933 162 810,
W
www
.centredartsantamonica.net), which displays temporary exhibitions of
Under the arch and into the shadows
One early summer morning in 1945, ten-year-old Daniel Sempere and his father
walk under the arch of c/de l’Arc del Teatre, “entering a vault of blue haze … until
the glimmer of the Ramblas faded behind us”. And behind a large, carved wooden
door, Daniel is shown for the first time the “Cemetery of Forgotten Books”, where
he picks out an obscure book that will change his life. It is, of course, the beginning
of the mega-successful novel
Shadow of the Wind
, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (2002), a
gripping mystery set in postwar Barcelona that uses the city’s old town in particular
to atmospheric effect. With copy in hand you can trace Daniel’s early progress, from
the street where he lives (c/Santa Anna) to the house of the beautiful, blind Clara
Barceló on Plaça Reial, not to mention a score of other easily identifiable locations
across the city, from the cathedral to Tibidabo – always keeping a wary eye out for a
pursuing stranger with “a mask of black scarred skin, consumed by fire”.
THE RAMBLAS
|
Rambla de Santa Mònica