Театро Сирко

Few theatres can be turned into a circus ring, and fewer still have been doing it since 1887. Albacete's house was built with a horseshoe auditorium whose stalls clear away to make a ring, cast-iron columns carrying neo-Mudéjar arches borrowed from the Alhambra. It closed in 1985, was bought by the city in 1993, rebuilt between 1999 and 2002, and reopened that September with some 940 seats. The town's international circus festival is held here each year, and the house also mounts opera as a member of the Spanish opera network Ópera XXI — a combination of uses no other European theatre has kept up for so long.