They are pure nineteenth century. A glamorous atmosphere to the utmost. The height of good taste. They are not in the outskirts, but in the historic center, joining streets and neighborhoods. The shopping passageways sublimated the mere act of buying. You only have to look at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II of Milan to verify how they rise as secular cathedrals. We have this one on one side of Piazza del Duomo, designed by Giuseppe Mengoni (1865-1877), in the likeness of London’s Burlington Arcade (1819), the prototype of glass-roofed galleries. It connects the Duomo and La Scala theatre, but its four floors with haute couture stores, bookstores and restaurants invite you to stay.
Another good example of a masterpiece in service of commerce is the Passage Pommeraye in Nantes, which serves as a link between the Graslin cultural district and the Commerce district. It has three levels full of sculptures, filigree, lamps and mirrors. Climbing up and down its stairs, beyond the shops, is a real luxury. If you came with the idea of shopping, you might forget it in the face of such a display of creativity. But you don’t have to go to Italy or France. In Spain we have examples of how artistic a shopping gallery can be.
In Albacete lies the Lodares Passage, which leads us to imagine how splendid urban life was in the early 20th century. In Valladolid, among its endless monumental catalog, the Gutiérrez Passage stands out, so much of the nineteenth-century taste. And in the illustrious Zaragoza, by the Ebro, the Pasaje del Comercio y de la Industria, nicknamed the Pasaje del Ciclón for the historic toy shop that housed it. The three bear witness to the great aesthetic ambition of the era.
Lodares Passage, in Albacete
The aesthetics are Modernist, richly ornamented. Lighting a commercial and residential gallery in the old town of Albacete. The Lodares Passage, between Tinte and Mayor streets, delights photographers and makes art lovers’ mouths water. It is not surprising that it has been proclaimed one of the prettiest streets in Spain, in addition to being, as one can imagine, a symbol of the city, such as the Gran Hotel, the Fontecha Flour Mill, today the seat of the Regional Government, or the Cathedral of San Juan Bautista.
The Lodares Passage is famous for being the prettiest street in Spain.
It was designed by Buenaventura Ferrando Castell at the instance of the businessman Gabriel Lodares, with three floors crowned by a dome of iron and glass that lets light filter through the 90 meters of its path. Highlighting the columns and pilasters that frame the shop windows, the allegorical figures in the form of caryatids with classical inspiration (Industry, the Wealth of the Earth, the Poetic Arts and the Liberal Arts), the wrought-iron balconies and the striking moldings.
A jewel raised between 1925 and 1929 with sculptural nods to the god Mercury, as protector of commerce, and perfectly integrated into the new urban planning of the time. It remains a shopping center, with small shops and cafés. It presents two façades: the one on Tinte Street, more spectacular; the one on Mayor Street, more modest.
Gutiérrez Passage, in Valladolid
Like Lodares, the Gutiérrez Passage is a covered shopping and residential gallery that connects two streets, Fray Luis de León and Castelar, uniting the cathedral and the Plaza Mayor. It is in Valladolid and was inaugurated a few years earlier, in 1886, so that the upper and middle bourgeoisie could delight in goods arriving from bustling Europe. Again, it was a businessman who was behind its construction, the same one who gave it its name.
The Gutiérrez Passage of Valladolid gave wings to the bourgeoisie of the era.
The ceilings are supported by a wooden structure, except for the central rotunda, made of iron and glass, which was the height of the fashion. Under that dome, a Mercury sculpture. Moreover, paintings by Salvador Seijas adorn the ceilings with mythological and allegorical themes, between stuccoes and vegetal motifs. The entrance to the passage is of wrought iron, with the inscription of its name and birth date. After years of prosperity, it ceased to function and fell into oblivion, until it was restored in the late 20th century, with commercial activity resuming.
Cyclone Passage, in Zaragoza
Its owner? Juan María Jordán de Urriés y Ruiz de Arana, Marquis of Ayerbe, who wished for the Aragonese city the glamour that galleries flourishing in Europe exuded. A place for the small nobility and the bourgeoisie to stroll to see and be seen, as in the cycle of In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust. It operated with the appeal of elegant geometric and floral decoration, neoclassical columns, and ornamented ceilings.
Like the Gutiérrez Passage, it lived years of abandonment, limited to being a thoroughfare. But the Expo of 2008 arrived and changed everything. It recovered its spirit as a fin-de-siècle architectural treasure with a classical air and a shopping center vibe, housing shops, bars and restaurants. They are two galleries that cross in the center, with four entrances, from the Plaza del Pilar, Santiago Street, Alfonso I Street and the Government Delegation.
