Hello from Buenos Aires! I’ve been here for 5 days now, and it’s safe to say I love it. It’s busy and colourful, and full of amazing ice cream – so it fits all my criteria, really. 😉 The first major sight I’ve visited was the Cemetery of Recoleta, located in, you guessed it, the Recoleta district. This seems like a morbid thing to have as an attraction, but actually, it’s wonderful, in a creepy way. The former orchard of the BasÃlica Nuestra Señora del Pilar, it was converted to the city’s first public cemetery in 1822, and now houses the graves of important Argentines such as former Presidents, Nobel Prize winners, and of course Eva Perón, First Lady of Argentina 1946-52, who was a champion of labour rights and the working class, and is still very much alive in the collective consciousness of Argentina. There’s even said to be the ghost of former gravedigger David Alleno haunting the cemetery, who, as the story goes, saved up his money to buy a tomb and statue of himself, then killed himself on their completion.
It’s a total maze, much bigger than it seems from the outside, and a moment of calm and quiet within the noisy city around it. Some of the tombs are elaborate, some simple. Some are pristine, and many more are smashed and decomposing. All are stunning. I particularly enjoyed the expressions on the carved angels’ faces – much more expressive than many statues I’ve seen in European churches, I thought. They seem like real guardians of the inhabitants of their tombs. The juxtaposition between the cemetery and the vibrant city just visible beyond it is also striking.
You could easily spend a couple of hours here, just looking around, or reading on one of the benches – it’s very quiet and peaceful, and easy to avoid other people even when it’s relatively busy. I went just for a wander round to kill some time, although I might go back for one of the free guided tours they offer to learn about more of the people who are buried there.
All in all, a beautiful and unusual landmark!
