The Recoleta Cultural Centre (in Spanish: Centro Cultural Recoleta) is an exhibition and cultural events centre located in the ''

barrio ''Barrio'' () is a Spanish language, Spanish word that means "Quarter (urban subdivision), quarter" or "neighborhood". In the modern Spanish language, it is generally defined as each area of a city, usually delimited by functional (e.g. residenti ...

'' of Recoleta,

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. It holds sculptures and exhibitions, as well as concerts and artistic presentations and workshops of diverse types. in September/October 2006 it held the wildly successful

onedotzero onedotzero is a contemporary digital arts organisation based in London that aims to promote new work in moving image and motion arts. The organisation conducts public events, artist and content development, publishing projects, education, produc ...

festival attracting over 20,000 people in 3 days for installations, live performances, screenings and music.

History

The building where the cultural centre is located was originally donated to the

Franciscan The Franciscans are a group of related Mendicant orders, mendicant Christianity, Christian Catholic religious order, religious orders within the Catholic Church. Founded in 1209 by Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi, these orders include t ...

s in 1716. The blueprints of the construction were drawn by

Jesuit , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders ...

architects Juan Krauss and Juan Wolf, while the design of the

façade A façade () (also written facade) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a Loanword, loan word from the French language, French (), which means 'frontage' or 'face'. In architecture, the façade of a building is often t ...

and interiors are attributed to Andrés Blanqui. The building, finished in 1732, is one of the oldest in the city. With the arrival of the

May Revolution The May Revolution ( es, Revolución de Mayo) was a week-long series of events that took place from May 18 to 25, 1810, in Buenos Aires, capital of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. This Spanish colony included roughly the terri ...

and the

declaration of independence A declaration of independence or declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of the ...

during the first part of the 19th century, the building changed purposes.

Manuel Belgrano Manuel José Joaquín del Corazón de Jesús Belgrano y González (3 June 1770 – 20 June 1820), usually referred to as Manuel Belgrano (), was an Argentine public servant, economist, lawyer, politician, journalist, and military leader. He ...

founded a drawing school there, and since the 1870s it served as a shelter for the destitute.

Torcuato de Alvear Torcuato de Alvear y Saenz de la Quintanilla ( Montevideo, 1822 – Buenos Aires, 1890) was a 19th-century Argentine conservative politician. He was the son of soldier and statesman Carlos María de Alvear and father of Marcelo Torcuato de Alvea ...

, first mayor of Buenos Aires, beautified Recoleta as well as the cultural centre;

Juan Antonio Buschiazzo Juan Antonio Buschiazzo (October 29, 1845May 13, 1917) was an Italian-born Argentine architect and engineer who contributed to the modernisation of Buenos Aires, Argentina in the 1880s and to the construction of the city of La Plata, the new cap ...

gave it an Italian style and created the chapel currently used as an auditorium. The second important renovation took place around 1980 by

Clorindo Testa Clorindo Manuel José Testa (December 10, 1923 – April 11, 2013) was an Italian-Argentine architect and artist. Testa was one of the leaders of the Argentine rationalist movement and one of the pioneers of the brutalist movement in Argent ...

Jacques Bedel Ancient and noble French family names, Jacques, Jacq, or James are believed to originate from the Middle Ages in the historic northwest Brittany region in France, and have since spread around the world over the centuries. To date, there are over ...

and

Luis Benedit Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archaic ...

, when the building was planned as a cultural centre.

Gallery

File:Buenos_aires_design.jpg, File:CCRecoleta008.JPG, File:CCRecoleta007.JPG, File:CCRecoleta006.JPG,

External links

Centro Cultural Recoleta's official site
{{Authority control Recoleta, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Centro Cultural Tourist attractions in Buenos Aires Arts centres in Argentina