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The Palais Concert was opened in 1913 originally as a confectionery, café and bar but almost immediately developed into the meeting place of the bohemian and intellectual world of Lima.
Soon it was the most fashionable café, decorated in art nouveau style with magnificent chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, walls covered with mirrors and two rooms with over 100 seats.
A female (!) orchestra played (unusual for Lima at this time) Viennese waltzes and German "lieder" (songs). The Palais Concert became soon an indicator of how Limas society began to change as the city took on a modern form.
On the "old" 50 Nuevos Soles note appears the Palais Concert with one of its regular guests, the journalist and writer Abraham Valdelomar, who was known to have said the following famous statement: Perú is Lima, Lima is the Jirón de la Unión, the Jirón de la Unión is the "Palais Concert" and the "Palais Concert"... that’s me!
In the last decades the famous Palais Concert housed among others a shoemaker, a discotheque and even a chicken restaurant. Then it was unoccupied for quite some time and deteriorated. Since October 2012 after extensive renovation in the basement and first floor the Palais Concert is now home to an outlet of Ripley department stores. In the near future the new owners are planning to renovate the second and third floor as well and opening there a classy cafe dedicated to Abraham Valdelomar and the history of this famous historical building.
