Who we are

Teatro Mayor and Teatro Estudio are part of the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Cultural Center and Public Library, a public infrastructure donated by the Santo Domingo family to the Capital District, Bogotá. 

Both theaters are also part of the Bogotá stage network whose administration is in charge of IDARTES (District Institute of the Arts), an entity attached to the city's Ministry of Culture, Recreation and Sports. Their operation is in charge of Fundación Amigos del Teatro Mayor (Friends of Teatro Mayor Foundation), under the terms of the Alliance signed with the Ministry of Culture, Recreation and Sports and IDARTES. 

One of the main objectives of this partnership is to join efforts in order to offer the city a high quality programming under a context of social and financial sustainability. 

The project started with the visit of Patricia Castaño, director at BiblioAmigos; Julio Mario Santo Domingo; his wife, Beatrice Santo Domingo; his son, Alejandro Santo Domingo and former Mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa to the other three Mega Bibliotecas –Great Libraries– of the city. During this visit, Peñalosa talked with Julio Mario Santo Domingo about the inminent need to build a fourth Great Library in Suba, a district located up north of Bogota, and about their lack of resources to get the project going.   

Julio Mario Santo Domingo, aware of the social impact of libraries, offered to donate the resources of the construction of the fourth Great Library of the city. At first, it was just a library but the idea grew so much, that the construction ended up being a lot more. 

Under the administration of Mayor Lucho Garzón, Alejandro Santo Domingo decided to make an additional donation for educational and cultural equipment. With this scheme and along with BibloAmigos, the entity in charge of carrying out the procedures so that this project would become a reality, an agreement was signed with the District Administration. 

The first turn the project took towards what we have today was when Mrs. Beatrice Santo Domingo suggested to consider including the construction of a theater within the donation, since eventually this theater was going to be built in the Suba area as well. Given this suggestion, Doña Beatrice asked Daniel Bermúdez, the architect, to study this possibility. The idea was to include a theater that would serve world-class performances, including opera. With the addition of the theater, the library was transformed into a Cultural Center. 

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE CONVENTION 0034 OF 2009 

MAYOR OF BOGOTÁ D.C. 

Claudia López Hernández 

REPRESENTATIVE OF THE MAYOR OF BOGOTÁ D.C. 

DISTRICT SECRETARY OF CULTURE, RECREATION AND SPORTS 

Nicolás Montero Domínguez 

GENERAL DIRECTOR OF THE DISTRICT INSTITUTE OF ARTS - IDARTES 

Catalina Valencia Tobón 

PRESIDENT OF VALOREM S.A. 

Carlos Arturo Londoño Gutiérrez 

PRESIDENT OF CARACOL TV 

Gonzalo Córdoba Mallarino 

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE RAMÍREZ MORENO FOUNDATIONS 

Mónica Moreno Bejarano