Gran Teatre del Liceu

The horseshoe auditorium in red and gold, reconstructed exactly after the 1994 fire

Built in 1847 by a private shareholders' society rather than a monarch, which is why the Liceu has no royal box. It burnt in 1861, was bombed by an anarchist in 1893 and burnt again in 1994 when a welding spark caught the curtain; the city rebuilt the auditorium to the original design and reopened in 1999.

The result is a nineteenth-century room with twenty-first-century machinery behind it, and a Catalan audience with strong opinions about Wagner.