Unfortunately, we arrived too late. It was supposed to be open until sunset, but in a rare show of not just punctuality, but also haste, the guards at the cemetery were just locking up the gates when we arrived, at least an hour before dark.
Main gates.
Even without being able to enter the cemetery itself, there was plenty to see in the grassy plaza around it, the same plaza that fills up with booths and artisans on Saturday and Sunday mornings but is otherwise as peaceful and green as any of the other parks in the city.
Here you can see one of the walls of the cemetery in the background.
At the edge of the plaza, across the field from the cemetery, there are a bunch of little restaurants with outdoor tables like the one in the background here. There is also this giant tree. Not sure exactly what type it is, and I have yet to get a good picture of its trunk, but you can see some of its massive branches here in the foreground. Farther away from the trunk, which is surrounded by the metal fence seen on the left, there are wooden beams to support these branches, which stretch out so far and are so heavy that the beams are needed for safety reasons; apparently, there's risk of them breaking and falling on people.
The entire piece of open land on which the cemetery and plaza sits used to belong to an order of monks, the Order of Recoletos, who came to Buenos Aires in the early 1700s and settled on this spot, building the church above, the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora del Pilar, in 1732 as part of a convent which included present-day Recoleta Cemetary, which was then entirely private.
Sometime after Argentina gained its independence from Spain, there was an ecclesiastical reform that resulted in the expulsion of the monks. The governor at the time, Brigadier General Don Martin Rodriguez, faced with a rapidly increasing population and all the problems that entailed, inaugurated it as a public cemetery - the very first in Buenos Aires - in 1822.
The ground sloping down to the northeast of the hill on which the church and cemetery sits is named for Torcuato de Alvear. He was the mayor who, in 1881, hired architect Juan Antonio Buschiazzo as part of his efforts to remodel the cemetery. Buschiazzo designed the brick wall surrounding it and the gates at the main entrance (the ones the guards closed on us, shown above). That same wall runs from the gates to the church, community center, and other buildings on the hill.
Both the main entrance, the church, and the community center (no photos yet) are located along Calle Junín. The weekend fair stretches across Plaza Intendente Torcuato de Alvear, though a huge section of it is currently undergoing some sort of construction. There's a high, bright yellow fence surrounding it, so I can't see in to tell you what's going on, but I hope they finish by the time I go. It's using up valuable fairground space!
Here you can actually see all the mausoleums crowded in together from above. Gives you a good idea of what a maze it is.
A shot or two of one of the statues in the plaza, not too far from the cemetery itself.
Show above: Intersection of Avenida Alvear (on which you see the back mini van in the foreground) and Calle Posadas/Emilio Pettorutti.
These were taken from across the street from Plaza Intendente Torcuato de Alvear - Plaza Alvear - from the north side, looking past traffic and up the hill towards that giant pink building in the background. It's a shopping mall, specializing in mostly home furniture and decor, believe it or not.
Turning around, and walking a few steps past the MALBA, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, a modern art museum (no pictures yet), we came to the pedestrian bridge that spans Avenida Presidente Figueroa Alcorta, one of the big avenues of the city. It's semi-famous for its brightly painted underside and the array of colorful, politically-oriented chalk messages that always adorn its surface.
The text above reads:
MARIANO FERREYRA
VIVA TU LUCHA
OBRERA Y SOCIALISTA
Translation:
MARIANO FERREYRA
YOUR FIGHT LIVES ON
LABOR AND SOCIALIST
Mariano Ferreyra was a politically active Argentina student who died last time I was studying abroad here, in October of 2010. He was shot in a fight between socialist railway workers and Peronist trade unionists. Allegedly, police purposefully stood by during the incident, contributing to its escalation and the boy's death by their failure to interfere. There were marches - huge marches, with thousands of people - and even a general strike of the CTA, the Argentine Workers' Central Union (Central de los Trabajadores Argentinos), a trade union federation.
Here, it says:
de un pasado impune y un presente con memoria construyamos nuestro futuro
Translation:
From a past unpunished [or, "a past of impunity"] and a present with memory [or, "full of memory"] we build our future.
The "past unpunished" most likely alludes to the atrocities committed during the country's last dictatorship, from 1976 to 1983. Despite numerous trials over the past few years, and some more directly after the restoration of democracy, a good deal of Argentines feel the men responsible have yet to be adequately judged and held accountable for their actions.
The bridge from the other side, looking across Avenida Figueroa Alcorta and, farther back, Avenida Del Libertador, to see Plaza Alvear, partially walled off by that yellow fence.
View from the bridge, looking west: Facultad de Derecho. University of Law. Entirely public and free of charge to attend.
On the other side of Avenida Alcorta, we walked along the road, past the law school to Plaza Naciones Unidas, home to the Floralis Genérica, the giant metal flower visible to the left in the background of the photo above. Maria was pretty excited, having heard of it but never seen it before. "The flower!" she kept exclaiming.
This is "the flower." It was a gift to the city by architect Eduardo Catalano in 2002. Really - and this can go on my list of things I had forgotten about the city - it's kind of terrifying. It's too big, too metallic, and reaches out of the pool in which it sits like some giant, robotic claw. Anyone looking at it - or at least, both Maria and I - cannot help imagining that, just beneath the surface of that pool, lurks the rest of it: forearm, elbow, shoulder, torso, etc.
It's absolutely massive. Each individual petal is 13 by 7 meters (over 42 and half feet by almost 23 feet). It weighs 18 tons. That little bird perched on top of one of the petals provides some reference for scale.
It's made mostly of steel, with aluminum plates making up the shiny outside.
At this angle it looks benign enough... I suppose. But really, in person, it's intimidating.
It sits in a 40 meter (over 131 feet) reflecting pool.
It has a built-in mechanism to open in the morning and close at night, a 20-minute process - when it is actually working, which, like many things in Argentina, is not exactly the norm. Supposedly, it will also automatically close itself in the event of strong winds. If it actually functioned as it should, I'd really start to suspect it of being some giant evil robot claw.
Sunset. Almost, anyway.
We spent way too much time photographing the flower. Soon Maria was saying "Stupid flower" with almost every other picture she took. I picked it up, too, careful to maintain an intonation reminiscent of a pouting five-year-old child's. We both groaned inwardly about the time it would take to sift through all the shots later on - and the fact that we just couldn't seem to step away from the thing. It's an overly photogenic giant evil robot flower. And then we couldn't help laughing over the afternoon's range of flower-centric emotion: elation, then fear, then... "Stupid flower."
Proof I was there. :)
Sources and further reading about the cemetery:
And the flower:
http://www.buenosaires-argentina.com/attractions/floralis-generica.html
http://www.conozcabuenosaires.com.ar/monumentos/floralis.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floralis_Gen%C3%A9rica
