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Recoleta is a downtown residential neighborhood in the city of Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina; it is an area of great historical and architectural interest, principally because the Recoleta Cemetery is located there. It is also an important tourist destination and cultural center of the city. It is also considered one of the more affluent neighborhoods, and the cost per square meter/foot of real estate is one of the highest in the city. The Recoleta is accessible by the “D Line” of the Buenos Aires Subway which passes through the neighborhood.
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.
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.
The cemetery is located next to the former monastery of the Recollect Fathers. It is an outstanding display of nineteenth- and twentieth-century funerary art and architecture, with private family crypts of the bourgeoisie and mausolea of the landowning classes. The mortal remains of many figures in Argentine history can be found here: Juan Bautista Alberdi, Manuel Dorrego, Bartolomé Mitre, Juan Manuel de Rosas, Cornelio Saavedra, Guillermo Brown, and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. Perhaps the most popular among them is the tomb of Eva Perón whose grave is visited daily by large numbers of tourists and admirers of Peronism.
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 elegant Libertador Avenue, is the el Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (MNBA), which holds in its permanent collection priceless 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 major multimedia exhibition center. Behind Carlos Thays Park, is located the Centro Municipal de Exposiciones which houses a wide variety of exhibitions and cultural events.
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) spent their evenings. At this, and at other cabarets such as the Armenonville, a “”peringundín”” (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). 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.
The neighborhood is graced by 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 excellent examples of Spanish Colonial art. Particularly noteworthy is a beautiful sculpture which represents one of the Apostles by the Spanish sculptor, Alonso Cano.
The neighborhood is well known for its shopping opportunities. The most important French and Italian designers have shops in Recoleta. Recoleta is also a distinctive gastronomic area of the city. Its restaurants, many having earned international awards, are located along Ortiz Street, closed to motor traffic. Here, the renown chef Gato Dumas has had several restaurants. A classic in the neighborhood, and the preferred locale of the Buenos Aires cultural elite, is the literary café, Clásica y Moderna, located on Callao Avenue at Paraguay Street.
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