Recoleta, Buenos Aires

Recoleta is a ''barrio'' or neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina, located in the northern part of the city, by the Río de la Plata. The area is perhaps best known to be the home of the distinguished Recoleta Cemetery. It is a traditional upper-class and conservative neighborhood with some of the priciest real estate in the city, known for Paris-style townhouses, lavish former palaces and posh boutiques.

The neighborhood is served by Line D and Line H of the Buenos Aires Underground, as well as by many bus lines in Avenida Santa Fe.

Geographical location

The Recoleta neighborhood is composed of the area limited by Montevideo and Uruguay Streets, Córdoba Avenue, Mario Bravo and Coronel Díaz Streets, Las Heras Avenue, Tagle Street, the F.G.B.M railway, Jerónimo Salguero Street, and by the Río de La Plata or River Plate.

Neighboring communities are Retiro to the southeast, San Nicolás, Balvanera and Almagro to the south, and Palermo to the northwest, and the River Plate to the northeast.

History

The name of the neighborhood comes from the monastery – the Recollect Convent () – of the Recollect fathers, members of the Franciscan Order, which was established in the area at the beginning of the 18th century. They founded a monastery and a church dedicated to Nuestra Señora del Pilar with a cemetery attached. The Recoleta pathway is nearly the exact geographic center of the neighborhood, and one of its highest points in the city, which, at the end of the 19th century attracted wealthy families from the south of the city who sought to escape from the deadly yellow fever outbreak which began in 1871. From that time on, the Recoleta has been one of the most stylish and expensive neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, home to private family mansions, foreign embassies, and luxury hotels, including the Alvear Palace Hotel.

The historical center of the neighborhood is the Church of Nuestra Señora del Pilar, construction of which was completed in 1732. For that reason, the neighborhood was occasionally called ''El Pilar''. The church was originally situated at the edge of the banks that sloped down to the Río de la Plata and Manso Creek. The creek, also known as ''Tercero del Norte'', currently flows through an underground pipe, and runs below present-day Pueyrredón Avenue. It formed a type of small delta, with channels along the current Austria and Tagle Streets, which flowed into the Río de la Plata.

When Buenos Aires suffered terrible cholera and yellow fever epidemics in the 1870s, the population of the city spread out to avoid the contagion. It was for that reason that, while the underprivileged classes settled in the south-southwest of the city, the most wealthy settled in the Recoleta area, where the height of the terrain reduced the presence of insects which transmitted the diseases.

These families (many of which were members of the ruling national elite, considered of "noble" ancestry (although there were no noblemen in the former Hispanic territories) for having descended from respected historical figures from the period of Argentine independence), built mansions and other notable buildings in several European architectural styles of the period (many of which were demolished towards the end of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s and once again during the 2000s). Consequently, Buenos Aires has often been referred to as the "Paris of South America". Nowadays, what is left of these traditional buildings coexist with elegant modern constructions.

Together with some sections of the neighboring communities of Retiro and Palermo, Recoleta forms a part of the area known as Barrio Norte, Buenos Aires, a traditional residential zone for the city’s most affluent families, where a great portion of the cultural life of the city is concentrated.

Culture

The Recoleta neighborhood is distinguished by its great cultural spaces. In addition to historical monuments, it is home to the National Fine Arts Museum or Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, the National Library of Argentina, the Recoleta Cultural Center, and other exhibition venues.

Recoleta Cemetery

The Recoleta Cemetery is one of the main tourist attractions in the neighborhood. It was designed by the French architect Prosper Catelin, at the request of President Bernardino Rivadavia, and was dedicated in 1822.

Museums and cultural centers

Next to the cemetery is the former General Juan José Viamonte Shelter, administered in the past by the Recollect Fathers. When it ceased functioning as a shelter for the indigent, it was acquired by the city and converted into the Centro Cultural Recoleta, one of the most important exhibition halls for the plastic arts in the city. 150 meters away, across Libertador Avenue, is the el Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes ( MNBA), which holds in its permanent collection works of art by Argentine artists such as Berni and Seguí, as well as works by European masters such as Titian, Goya, Rembrandt, Gauguin, and Manet. To the east, along Posadas Street, is the Palais de Glace, which was, at the beginning of the twentieth century, an ice skating rink. It has since been turned into a multimedia exhibition center. Behind Carlos Thays Park is located the Centro Municipal de Exposiciones, which houses a wide variety of exhibitions and cultural events.

Education

Several of the oldest and most prestigious schools in the capital are in the Recoleta neighborhood. Among them are the Escuela Superior de Comercio Carlos Pellegrini, the Escuela Argentina Modelo, the Scuola Edmundo de Amicis, the Colegio Champagnat, the Colegio Mallinkdrodt, the and Normal School 1, the oldest portion of which has been declared a National Monument.

Many university schools are also found in Recoleta, including several University of Buenos Aires faculties such as the Law, Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacy and Biochemistry faculties, and the Las Heras branch of the Faculty of Engineering, an annex building in the neogothic style building characterized by the cold, humid air typical of gothic structures.

A construction in the brutalist style, located on Agüero Street between Libertador Avenue and Las Heras, is home to the new National Library of Argentina. The building was completed in 1992, after 20 years of construction work. It contains more than four million volumes, including twenty priceless editions, such as a rare copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Recoleta and tango

Several cabarets in the neighborhood served as locales for tango music and dance. The ''Pabellón de las Rosas'', on Libertador Avenue and Tagle Street, like the Café de Hansen in the Palermo neighborhood, maintained a Belle Époque atmosphere, where the so-called ''atorrantes'' ("vagabonds", but also "scoundrels", "spoiled brats") spent their evenings. At this, and at other cabarets such as the ''Armenonville'', a "p''eringundín"'' ("dance hall") where Carlos Gardel was known to appear, fights—occasionally bloody—would break out between ''"malevos"'' ("ruffians"), "''compadritos"'' ("tough-guys") and ''"jailaifes"'' ("high-lifes” or high society boys) according to the florid contemporary slang (''lunfardo''). In the 1910s, when the Palais de Glace no longer served as an ice skating rink, it became a dance venue, and it is there where the tango finally became accepted by the upper classes of Buenos Aires, especially since it had already become a fad in Paris.

Many tango lyrics reflect life in the Recoleta neighborhood. One song, by Horacio Ferrer, set to music by Ástor Piazzolla, is the ''"Balada para un loco"'' ("Ballad for a Madman"), which cites two of the neighborhood streets, Callao and Arenales: ''"Salís de tu casa por Arenales... / Ya sé que estoy piantao, piantao, piantao... / ¿No ves que va la Luna rodando por Callao,/ que un corso de astronautas y niños, con un vals,/ me baila alrededor...?"'' (You leave home down Arenales ... / I know I'm mad, mad, mad../ don't you see the moon rolling down Callao? / how a carnival of astronauts and children /dance a vals around me...?")

Sculpture

The neighborhood has numerous statues and sculptures in its parks and plazas. It has been exaggerated that the Recoleta neighborhood has more statues than any neighborhood in the world. Among the statues that stand out are ''El último centauro'' ("The Last Centaur"), ''El Arquero'' ("The Archer") and the equestrian statue dedicated to Carlos María de Alvear. Additionally, there are works by the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, the ''Floralis Genérica'' by Eduardo Catalano, and the ''Torso Masculino Desnudo'' ("Nude Male Torso") by Fernando Botero. The Recoleta Cemetery also possesses many exquisite works of art, obscured by their funerary location: the sculpture known as the ''Cristo Muerto'' by Giulio Monteverde, for example. Furthermore, the neighboring Basilica of Nuestra Señora del Pilar holds examples of Spanish Colonial art. Particularly noteworthy is a sculpture which represents one of the Apostles by the Spanish sculptor, Alonso Cano

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