Teatro Olympia

Valencia opened the Olympia on 10 November 1915 with Il barbiere di Siviglia, on ground cleared four years earlier when the convent of San Gregorio came down. Vicente Rodríguez Martín's design was technically forward for the city — a metal frame and a lift, both novelties in Valencia then — and the entrance still shows its pink Alicante marble and an iron-and-glass canopy. From 1924 the building ran as a cinema. It came back to the stage in 1984 and has worked as a theatre since, on one of the busiest streets of the old town.