Recoleta

Recoleta is an affluent neighborhood in the northern district of Buenos Aires. In the early eighteenth century, the French Franciscan order of the Padres Recoletos built a chapel and convent in the area. The chapel became the Basilica Nuestra Señora del Pilar, completed in 1732. In 1822 the order was dissolved and the woods it owned near the basilica became the Northern Cemetery, or Cementerio de la Recoleta. The cemetery contains the mausoleums of prominent men and women, including Bartolome Mitre, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and Eva Perón.

Recoleta became more heavily populated after the 1871 yellow fever epidemic, when the well-off fled from the more affected southern neighborhoods of the city. By the late nineteenth century many French-style palaces and villas had been built in the area, especially on Avenida Alvear. The University of Buenos Aires Law School, an institution crucial to the maintenance of Argentina's elite, was built close to the Basilica del Pilar. In 1910 the intendant Joaquin de Anchorena ordered the redesigning of the neighborhood's plazas and squares and the building of the Palais de Glace, originally an ice rink and ballroom for elite social affairs, which serves as an art gallery in the early twenty-first century. In 1932 the Hotel Alvear opened, for decades the most expensive five-star hotel in Latin America. In 1968 the Jockey Club, a club of wealthy horse breeders, moved to Recoleta as well.

Since the 1960s the verdant areas that surround the cemetery and the basilica, known as Plaza Francia, host an artisans' market and numerous street artists. In 1980 architects Clorindo Testa, Jacques Bedel, and Luis Benedit remodeled an eighteenth-century building that had belonged to the Franciscans to build the Recoleta Cultural Center. The Buenos Aires Design Center was opened in the early 1990s. Especially on weekends, the Plaza Francia and its cultural spaces and activities attract thousands of people, who also patronize the varied cafes and restaurants of the area.

See alsoArgentina: The Twentieth Century; Buenos Aires.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cutolo, Vicente. Historia de los barrios de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires: Elche, 1998.

Lafuente Marchain, Ricardo. El barrio de la Recoleta. Buenos Aires: Municipalidad de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, 1973.

Luque Lagleyze, Julio. Apuntes sobre el barrio de la Recoleta. Buenos Aires: Cuadernos del Águila, 1990.

Nogués, Germinal. Buenos Aires, ciudad secreta. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1996.

                                       Valeria Manzano