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The Linares Passage, opened in 1891, is a European style open-air shopping promenade, with a long uniform shape, in a north-south direction. It creates a break in the traditional founding grid block, to communicate the Plaza San Jacinto (which became more important when it replaced the
Plaza Mayor –today Plaza Bolívar– as a marketplace) with Avenida Universidad (Este 4). The innovative uncovered passage proposed the construction of two three-story buildings facing each other (the first of their height in Caracas). The first one, facing west, located from Traposos to San Jacinto (opposite the Libertador’s birthplace), with its north façade on Plaza de San Jacinto; the second one, with iron balconies, facing east, toward the old municipal market of Caracas. It is named after its builder, the merchant, businessman and promoter Juan Esteban Linares, born in La Guaira, who obtained great income from the Municipal Bakeries of the time. This businessman and philanthropist who, two years later, in 1893, would build Caracas’ first children’s hospital (Hospital Linares, today Hospital Carlos Bello, belonging to the Venezuelan Red Cross), created this new inner street. Its façades were refurbished in 2011, and are evidence of a period of considerable European influence in the conception of architecture of the capital.
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