The term “City of the Dead” is often used to describe cemeteries, but until I visited Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, I never understood why a cemetery would be described that way. As an American, I’m used to cemeteries full of greenery and gravestones spaced far enough apart to give their residents a little privacy. Some of our cemeteries, like Rosehill in Chicago, have shared mausoleums, but most of our cemeteries have at least some green space. Recoleta is like a mini concrete jungle with the only greenery being that that slips through the cracks in the sidewalk.
Recoleta’s 14 acres are laid out like a city with a wide promenade down the center and side streets containing over 6,400 mausoleums in various states of repair. A key difference between Recoleta and a city is that there are no “good” neighborhoods and “bad” neighborhoods, in this city of the dead well-kept homes of the dead are shoulder to shoulder with those in disrepair. The styles of these abodes vary widely as well, with structures that look like modern day banks shoulder to shoulder with small gothic temples. The saddest structures for me were the “high rise” mausoleums that had fallen into disrepair to the point that coffins were visible.
Recoleta Cemetery was established in 1822 and was built in the garden of the former convent, Our Lady of Pliar. It takes its name from the Recollect monks, who had previously owned the land. French engineer Prospero Catelin, who also designed the city’s Metropolitan Cathedral in the Plaza de Mayo, designed the cemetery. Although at one time the cemetery may have been sacred ground, the Catholic Church does not consider it sacred, as masons and other non-Catholics were buried within its walls.
The residents of Recoleta include the famous and the infamous. Perhaps the most famous resident is Eva Peron, the wife of Argentina’s former president Juan Peron. The one time actress was a woman who did much in her 33 years on earth including championing women’s rights in Argentina. She died in 1952 and her body spent time in Italy and France before being returned to Argentina 1976 and buried in her family’s crypt in Recoleta Cemetery. The Argentina government went to elaborate steps to make sure her body was not tampered with again, it is buried under tons of concrete.
Although Liliana Crociati de Szasak was significantly less famous than Eva Peron, her memorial is much more promient. Liliana was killed by an avalanche in Innsbruck, Austria in 1970 and her mother designed her Neo-Gothic tomb. The most striking part of the monument is the bronze statue of Liliana in a full length gown with her head resting on the head of a statue of her beloved dog Sabu.
As I was wandering through the cemetery on a rainy Sunday afternoon, I came across a black mausoleum with a statue of a man in a bathrobe in front and was a little freaked out that there’d be a statue of someone in a robe. However, once I stepped back and got a little more perspective, I realized that he was a boxer. Doing my research after the fact, informed me that he was Luis Angel Firpo, an Argentine boxer called “The Wild Bill of the Pampas.” He died i 1060 and in 2003 was named one of the greatest punchers of all time.
One of the most unique mausoleums , at least in my mind, was the “rock cabin.” The stone vault was built for General Tomas Guido, an officer in the Argentine War of Independence, was built by his son, the poet and politician Carlos Guido y Spano, with his own hands as a tribute to his father.
There are so many more interesting stories about Recoleta Cemetery that I could fill hundreds of blog pages with stories and images and I most likely will at least write one more post to share my stories, but for now it is off to explore the living aspects of Argentina.