and promote not only Barrios himself, a composer who deserves more recognition, but also a very special moment in the Monument's history: the Alhambra of the artists.

## WHERE YOU ARE

From the mid-19th-century onwards, the Alhambra's main street, the Calle Real, was occupied by the first hotels and photographic studios on the hill. They sprung up in response to the growing national and international interest in the Nasrid palaces. The Romantic Movement was at its peak such that anything with an oriental theme was suddenly of interest and fashionable. The Alhambra, a symbol of a mythical lost culture, was doubly Romantic because of its mediaeval and oriental origins. A new "Alhambresque" style of buildings and gardens arose from this cult of the exotic, promoted by travellers who visited Spain and then spread a romantic image of the country, converting it into an inspiration for artists that bore fruit in numerous works of literature, architecture, painting, sculpture, music and dance all over Europe. It was in this context that at the end of the century, Antonio Barrios bought a house that had been built on top of the Arabic Baths that once belonged to the Mosque, which is where you are now, together with a Nasrid era house and the adjacent gardens. On the ground floor of the house, which was to be their family home, he opened a grocery store and tavern to serve the local residents who at that time lived in many different parts of the Alhambra hill, as well as visitors to the Alhambra and the hotels mentioned earlier. Antonio Barrios, a man of great sensitivity and generosity, opened his house for decades to some of the most illustrious visitors to the city, becoming the perfect *cicerone* (guide) for any artists wishing to discover the Alhambra and Granada. His son carried on this work, acting as a nexus and a meeting-place between creators, scholars, journalists, conversationalists etc. from the cream of Spanish and international culture. In 1934, as a result of new criteria for the restoration and conservation of the Alhambra group of monuments, the house was expropriated by the Spanish government on instructions of the wise architect-curator, Leopoldo Torres Balbás, who managed to recover a great deal of the original Arabic Baths. From the last years of the 1970s the architect-curator Francisco Prieto-Moreno built various new rooms, which is where the current restoration work is being conducted. This space will house a museum with the rich and varied estate of Ángel Barrios, donated to the Council of the Alhambra and Generalife in the 1980s by the musician's daughter, Ángela Barrios Pavía.

PROJECT FOR THE NEW ÁNGEL BARRIOS MUSEUM
AND LEGACY