Teatro Colón Bogotá

This guide to Teatro Colón in Bogotá starts with an odd fact: the opera house's own steam boiler, fed by shoveled coal each night, was once the strongest power source in the city, strong enough that it lit the presidential palace across the street. You'll hear how Italian architect Pietro Cantini modeled the horseshoe auditorium on Europe's grand houses so the audience could watch each other, and about the frescoed muses and Annibale Gatti's hand-painted curtain, its thirty-six figures pulled from operas overhead. Look up at that chandelier still hanging above the stage before the house lights dim.