A unique building in Chamberí is hosting a public interpretation center starting Wednesday, October 16. It will have an exhibition hall on its first floor and viewpoints on the second and top floor, all completely free for its visitors.
It is Beti Jai, one of the oldest Basque pelota courts in Madrid, which was created after the popularization of this traditional game in the mid-nineteenth century, a time when it attracted the interest of Spanish royalty.
The miracle of a forgotten building
Until nine years ago, this fronton was abandoned to its fate. Being an open building and a lightweight construction, rains and storms wreaked havoc on its metal structure, which today looks radiant thanks to the remodeling it has undergone since 2015.
Despite the fact that the City Council has been working for nine years to improve the building, it was not reopened to the public until last March. Since the long-awaited reopening, Beti Jai has welcomed 33,000 visitors interested in the capital’s rich architectural heritage.
The exhibition area of the nineteenth-century fronton presents the history of its design in 1891, its inauguration in 1894, the different lives it had during the twentieth century -from a space for fencing exhibitions to a concessionaire- and its final restoration in 2019. It does so through photographs, documents and audiovisual pieces on loan from institutions such as the Leonardo Torres Quevedo Museum or the Save the Beti Jai Fronton Platform.
Starting this week, Beti Jai can be visited from Tuesday to Sunday in the morning (from 10:00 to 14:00 hours) and has 8,000 places available for activities in its facilities (with prior reservation). In addition, to celebrate its reopening, from November 1 to December 8 there will be dramatized itineraries to relive Madrid’s love for the game of Basque pelota.