Discovering Cartagena

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Hidden Reminder Of A More Elegant Age 

Modern cities often hide their treasures very effectively.  Retailers are prime culprits in the desecration of what could remain beautiful streets. Garish signs and insensitive shop fronts destroy the elegance of many an ancient city. 

Cartagena isn’t immune to this.  Some companies are waking up to the damage that their ugly images cause to attractive areas and McDonalds, for instance, is making efforts to fit in with traditional area ambiences while still making sure that customers recognise their stores.  This initiative hasn’t got through to the main Cartagena shop yet.  In the UK, Tesco, recently undertook to make sure that it’s small shops in urban areas would no longer be as garish as previously. 

Cartagena is better than most places when it comes to avoiding the worst excesses of modern retail design. The big Zara shop in the Calle Mayor is a fine example of the sensitive integration of a busy shop into a historic building and street.  A certain air of scruffiness in Cartagena is undoubtedly a big plus point – this is a living, working, city and not a tourist trap all prettified and standardized. 

On the main shopping drag, at the top of the Puera de Murcia, near the imposing Pedreño House, which sits at the junction of the Jabonarias and Carmen streets, a corner building can be seen. 

The street-facing shops are of no interest whatsoever.  But if you persevere and enter a small arcade you will be able to get a feeling for what Cartagena must have been like in a more elegant age. 

There is an arcade that must have been very much like those found in the 19^th century in the better parts of Paris, London and other European style centres.  Today it is very dilapidated and in a sorry state but take a look at the roof of the arcade above your head which has the remnants of what was once, no doubt, richly painted and gilded mouldings and decoration. 

The arcade comes to an end after a short distance as a barrier with a door in it blocks further access.  But it’s worth hanging around a few minutes to see if anyone goes in or out.  If they do, you can get a glimpse of the rest of the arcade when the door is open, with its slim iron columns.   

Today, the back of the building seems to house apartments and, indeed, this has probably always been the case.  But the ground floor sections where once the posh shops would once have been are boarded up. 

Maybe a smart retail operator will spot the opportunity to give Cartagena its own Burlington Arcade.  

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