You don’t expect a cemetery to be the number 1 tourist attraction in Buenos Aires, but Recoleta Cemetery is a truly awe inspiring monumental city to the elite movers and shakers of times past.

 

‘I too shall lie in the dust when I am dead, but now let me win noble renown’. (Homer/The Iliad 800-700 BC)

 

Homer’s adage is usually apt but wandering round the cemetery of Recoleta, it was easy to see that while these people had indeed won renown, they had no intention of submitting their precious remains to the earth.

Argentina was once the 10th richest country in the world and at the turn of the last century Buenos Aires was justly known as the ‘Paris of the South’. The ‘portenos’  as the local inhabitants were called (after the port) grew immensely rich on the export of hides and meat and flaunted their vast wealth in the construction of European style grand public buildings and houses.

So it was only natural when they were dead that they should be interred in the style to which they were accustomed. Recoleta cemetery today is the number 1 tourist draw in Buenos Aires and it is a fascinating place, a mini city of the dead reflecting the architectural styles down the decades.

A grand porticoed entrance leads to a wide tree shaded avenue with mausoleums to each side. A green ship-topped pillar marks the grave of an Irishman who helped reform the navy and a large statue of Pelligrini is at the end, the first of several presidents buried here.

Except they are not really buried at all. The tombs are owned in perpetuity and the form seems to be 15 years at ground level, 10 years layered on one of the lower tiers, and then finally cremation. The tombs generally have glass doors or some other suitable opening so one can peek through to see solid mahogany caskets with great brass handles lying in state under the altar. This may have appropriate busts of the owners or carved crosses. Many are illuminated through fine stained glass and there are delicate soaring cupolas.

Looking in one can see the steps descending down and the coffins stacked neatly to each side, often about eight deep. From the outside, once you leave the initial avenue, the place becomes a giant warren of narrow streets where cats prowl and angels soar overhead. The tombs vary in their grandiosity, from great monoliths in shiny black marble to Grecian temples and even pyramids. In places, smaller tombs have been squeezed in between the gaps and everywhere there is a plethora of statuary, from soldiers standing guard to grieving mothers.

I wandered in morbid fascination, especially drawn to the derelict tombs where coffins hung awry under broken angels and dust added its own shroud. Shattered glass and rusty cobwebbed doors spoke of abandonment and I wondered at the stories behind the names, how the family had come to such an extinction that these tombs were so neglected.

One tomb which I suspect will never be neglected is that of Eva Peron; roses entwined through the door handles and there was a steady stream of visitors. After her death in 1953, her body went walkabout until its return from Italy in 1974 and she now lies in the fairly discreet Duarte family tomb, a final one upmanship over her husband who was buried in the much more middle class Chacarita cemetery.

Another poor girl was buried alive having only been in a coma: though her screams were heard, by the time the key to the mausoleum had been found, she had suffocated.

Such stories can be heard on the Monday to Friday 3pm guided walk of the cemetery by the Free Walks people (www.buenosairesfreewalks.com) – look for the orange t-shirts – though you actually pay AR$150 a person for this one. However, the guides are enthusiastic and well informed and I would thoroughly recommend them – just keep some time at the end for a lone wander to soak up the atmosphere.

Entrance is free and bells are tolled to mark closing time. There is only one entrance to the cemetery and fascinating though the place is, it could become a little spooky at night if you were to get locked in!

Much more preferable is to retire for a coffee at La Biela, a classic 1950’s grand cafe opposite the cemetery gates. It has a very popular outside terrace near the giant shady limbs of a gran gomero rubber tree and is a great people watching spot.