A more colorful Caminito, without the hordes of tourists

Calle Lanin is beautiful little street in the barrio of Barracas, in the south of Buenos Aires. If you are going to La Boca to see the colorful and historical Caminito street, then you might also consider taking the time to explore some of the neighboring barrio of Barracas, where you will find the quieter, shady, yet extremely colorful Lanin. (Don’t try this at night, it’s not really a safe place for tourists to be after dark). The murals there, created in the year 2000 by local artist Marino Santa Maria (who actually lives on this street), are definitely worth the trip to take a look.

Unfortunately I’m still pretty tight for time at the moment, so probably the most efficient way to give you an idea of what Lanin street is like, and to spare you my boring waffle, is through posting up a few more photos. Click below to see them!

Photos of Calle Lanin

Hope you enjoyed the photos

You can also check out this post on Calle Lanin by Argentina’s Travel Guide for some more info on this sightseeing attraction in Buenos Aires.

[Photo Credit: jmpznz, under this CC licence]

Costanera Sur – a quiet nature reserve just a stone’s throw from the city

The hustle and bustle of the Microcentro are lost in the cooling mood of the only ecological reserve in the city, the Reserva Ecologica Costanera Sur. A stone’s throw away from the trendy, modern Puerto Madero and you find yourself walking along the park’s boardwalk littered with nuzzling couples, parrillas, and more pigeons than you can throw a stick at.

The Costanera Sur’s walkway borders the front of the reserve and from there you can see the greater landscape that opens up into the park. The boardwalk itself is entertaining, with beautiful architecture and sculptures, casual eateries and dozens of pickup games of futbol. Your initial examination of the swampy marshland is only an introduction to the many more birds and interesting views that await you upon entering.

A microcosm of Buenos Aires charm on the Costanera Sur boardwalk

While I am usually a big advocate for close examinations, perhaps looking too closely at the first portion of the park would be a mistake. Due to the popularity of the walkway, and the dozens of adolescents and passersby, more than a few empty bottles and wrappers have been thrown all over the small concrete divider. The view from inside the park provides a much cleaner atmosphere, though the boardwalk itself should not be eschewed…

The culture that cumulates here daily is a microcosm of what makes Buenos Aires so charming. In fact, the history of the reserve owes much of its existence to leftovers. During its construction in the mid-20th century, remnants of demolished buildings and construction debris were discarded into the Rio de la Plata. Gradually the debris, mixed with sand from the river began to create the marshy foundation for what is now the reserve. Soon, the plants began to grow, and not long after the birds followed. The ecological park is the result of this interesting history, and a great location for observing that fascinating border where city and country convene.

[Photo Credit: jmpznz, under this CC licence]

Rent a bike to help explore the nature reserve

The park has two entrances. The main entrance is located on the southern side of the boardwalk and is an excellent place to rent a bicycle for the afternoon. 6 pesos will buy you an hour if you choose to explore the park from a biker’s point of view. This isn’t a bad way to go if you want to maximize your time bouncing around from view to view.

The entire walk around the reserve will take you more than an hour and that’s without stopping to peer through the reeds and to try and identify birds. The reserve offers several viewpoint stops that allow you a moment to pull out your binoculars and scan over the marshes that navigate through the wetlands. If you forget to bring your own, fifty centavos will allow you a peek through the public binoculars that are placed along decks that skirt out over the marshlands.

Spectacular views with interesting backdrops

The views in the reserve are spectacularly endless. From the parks entrance a quick look back gives you a different view of the boardwalk with the city stretching up behind it. Wandering through the dirt laid paths are benches that offer a brief rest while you take in the quiet escape you’ve earned from your walk.

Perhaps most breathtaking are the views on the eastern side of the park. The Rio de la Plata borders this edge of the reserve and boats can be seen sailing in the distance. The air here is cooler and cleaner than in the busy city and the grassy areas for sitting are a great place to settle down for a relaxing view…

[Photo Credit: jmpznz, under this CC licence]

This side of the reserve not only boasts amazing views of the river, but one of the best of the city. As you’ve chosen an afternoon away from the crazy downtown streets, it’s more than rewarding to see the city settled in the distance among a foreground of reeds and cattails.

Hide away from busy Buenos Aires down by the river

If you’ve entered the park from the south your walk continues past more scenes of the city and river. The river offers a true boardwalk where with some innovation and a keen eye you can find the entrance from inside the reserve and walk out along the river. On a hot day, or if you’re looking for a truer sense of solitude, this is one of the best hiding places in the city.

A closer look at the passing barges and water below will bring you even further away from the demanding pace of downtown. The northern side of the park offers many other surprises for those with a sharp eye. If you’re riding your rented bicycle too fast you may miss the small veterinary clinic and adoption center at the northern entrance of the park. Designed to offer veterinary assistance to the many birds that inhabit the reserve, you can see hawks and larger birds of prey that may usually be flying too high overhead for such a close examination. The small building also houses some wayward dogs that are now up for adoption; probably a better bet if you’re a Buenos Aires inhabitant rather than a traveler.

The end of a relaxing day at the Costanera Sur, Buenos Aires

From here, you’ve almost completed your circle. Your choices of return are to take the northern exit and walk back using the footpath, stopping for any number of snacks along the way (sure to be meat). Or, heading back from inside the park instead gives you a chance to prolong your afternoon oasis and take in more of the reserve.

When you do in fact decide to head on out of the nature reserve, Puerto Madero and the water diques are your transition home. You’ve probably found yourself hours later and the countless restaurants and bars located here are a perfect way to end your afternoon, or begin your evening. Whether you’re a Buenos Aires native or first time visitor, the Reserva Ecologica Costanera Sur is an ideal way to escape from the city without the headache of organizing day trips or the burden of their cost. Whether you’re a country mouse stuck in the city, or simply looking for an afternoon off, put this attraction near the top of your list.

Jeff Barry, over at at Buenos Aires, City of Faded Elegance, one of my favorite blogs about my adopted city, recently started what should be a very interesting series of posts about deteriorating and abandoned buildings in Buenos Aires.

He started the series with a post about an abandoned building on calle Bolivar in the barrio of Barracas, and tells an interesting story about the lives that would have once been led in crumbling buildings like these. It really is this type of deteriorating building and the stories within that gives a city like Buenos Aires authenticity and an interesting edge – we would be far worse off without these reminders of days gone by.

Jeff then invited other bloggers to join in the series by posting their own pictures of abandoned or deteriorating buildings in Buenos Aires, or indeed anywhere else. So far, Tango Cherie is the only Buenos Aires blogger to step up to the plate, with her post on run-down buildings in Havana, Cuba, that are in fact still very much lived in, despite their state of disrepair.

I decided to join in with the series, so here is my photo entry:

Abandoned building on calle Alsina, Monserrat

This building is found on the 400 block of Alsina, just across the street from one of my favorite old cafes in Buenos Aires, La Puerto Rico (great coffee and pastries by the way – review coming soon). It is also just a block away from Plaza de Mayo, so you would imagine it would be a prime location. However, despite that, I think it has been in more or less the same condition the two years I have lived so far in Buenos Aires, the only changes being the extra foliage growing on its walls, the changing state of its crumbling old facade, and the different fly posters that adorn its boardings each week.

Some similar buildings further down the block (on the corner opposite the lovely old Farmacia de Las Estrellas and above that the Buenos Aires city museum) have a sign on them indicating that the Buenos Aires city government is planning to renovate them and create shop space on the ground floors – however it seems that the separate building shown in my photo might be ignored for a while yet. We’ll see…

I hope that you all enjoyed my entry in this blog post series. Thanks for the great idea Jeff!

As I have almost certainly mentioned before, the Palacio Barolo is one of my favorite buildings in Buenos Aires. It is a simply magnificent mish-mash of architectural styles, held together by some amazing numeric symbolism that acts as a tribute to Dante Alighieri, and his epic poem “The Divine Comedy”. I will write a full post about the building and the fascinating stories behind it very soon, when I get the chance to take some more pictures that will fully do it justice.

For now however, this post is a review of the cafe that recently opened on its ground floor, Cafe Palacio Barolo, which is pretty darn good on its own merits, and also acts as an additional excellent excuse to spend some time inside this fantastic building. This is also my first post on the theme of Buenos Aires Cafes, and believe me it will be the first of many, because Buenos Aires is a city full of places to get your caffeine fix, and cafe culture also plays an important part in everyday life here.

[The Palacio Barolo building and cafe are featured on my suggested walking tour of Buenos Aires City Center, which can also by booked as a private walking tour of Buenos Aires, personally guided by me]

A Beautiful New Cafe in Buenos Aires

As you can see from the above picture, the cafe at the Palacio Barolo looks bright & clean and spick & span, being that it is in its first few months since opening. As part of a stunningly designed 1923 building, it of course has pieces of classic old world style, most specifically the ornamental ceiling work, but it is also mixed with some more modern touches, such as the reinforced glass floor of the seating area above the bar. Old and new go together very nicely in this case (as they do across the streets of Buenos Aires), and produce a very pleasant environment for a relaxed coffee or two.

If you are a visitor to the city and are strolling down Avenida de Mayo, the most obvious choice for a pit stop up until now has been Cafe Tortoni, as the oldest and most famous cafe in Buenos Aires. However, its status has obvious advantages and drawbacks – it is famous for a reason (beautiful interior, lots of history etc), but that also attracts the crowds of tourists, which can occasionally make for an unpleasant, loud atmosphere, and a long wait for service, or even to enter the cafe at all.

Meanwhile, Cafe Palacio Barolo is very calm and relaxed, but also based in a beautiful building with a lot of history in its own right, so it is certainly another good alternative option to Tortoni if you are in this area of Buenos Aires City Center. For those of you that can’t wait for my future post to learn more about fascinating design and history the building itself, fellow Buenos Aires bloggers Robert and Karine have both posted some excellent photos and information in the past.

The Coffee?

Now, I’m not much of a coffee expert, at least in comparison with many people from the USA (where the majority of my readers are based). I am from a nation of tea drinkers after all! Still, I think that when I review a cafe I should at least attempt to comment on the coffee. We ordered a cortado en jarrito each (a cortado is an espresso ‘cut’ with a small amount of hot milk, to take the edge off of it… and a cortado en jarrito is the same but in a taller cup, so you get more coffee), and they were very nice. Nothing spectacular, just decent coffee. I have heard some people say the coffee in Argentina is generally not that great, but for me it is usually pretty good, certainly in comparison to coffee in the UK.

However, the best part for me about the coffee in this cafe is that quite delightfully, everything comes with the Palacio Barolo monogram on it – the table, the cups, the napkins, the sugar holder, and even each individual sugar lump wrapper all bear the trendy little logo on the side – very cute, as can be seen in the picture above. It’s little touches like this that make me happy. I guess I must be easy to please

The prices are a little on the expensive side – 9 pesos for a cafe con leche y tres medialunas, but not overly so in all cases – for example the cortado en jarrito was 5 pesos, which is fairly reasonable. But remember, you are also paying for this privileged location inside one of the most remarkable buildings in Buenos Aires.

Watching the World Go By

Almost every part of Cafe Palacio Barolo is perfect for that most common and enjoyable of porteño pastimes – people watching. For a start, there are some nice sidewalk tables, perfect for an afternoon coffee on a nice sunny day, as you watch the people amble, the taxis zip, and the colectivos career down elegant Avenida de Mayo. Then there is a nice large glass window front on the cafe, which not only fills it wonderfully with huge amounts of light, but also affords more people watching as the outside world passes the cafe by.

Finally there is the balcony seating area above the bar, which is the perfect spot for some sneaky people watching opportunities, in this case of the other cafe clientèle seated down below. The balcony was where we sat on this occasion, and as you can see from the the photo to the right, I am most certainly a nosy so and so.

Cafe Palacio Barolo is certainly a great place to while away the hours over a coffee or two, which is something that should make you fit right in with the locals…

Whereas back home (at least, certainly in the UK) we are in and out of cafes fairly quickly, often hurried out by the waiter who is looking to make your table free for another paying customer, here in Buenos Aires it is quite normal to spend hours on end (no exaggeration) over one small coffee, chatting with friends or just relaxing by yourself. The waiters won’t get annoyed or rush you in any Buenos Aires cafe – in fact most of the time you have more of a job finding anyone who will take your money off you when you want to leave.

However, if there is one small downside to the Cafe Palacio Barolo, it is the fact that it is recently – perhaps word has not got around about it yet, and so at the moment it generally seems to not be very busy. This may suit some people who will enjoy the peace and quiet (and also it means the service is attentive), but if you are a people watcher, it certainly cuts down on your enjoyment, and the overall atmosphere. But hopefully this review will help a little to get the word out and make the cafe just a little more busy!

Cafe Palacio Barolo: The Verdict

• Cafe Rating: (4/5) A beautiful new cafe in a winning location, inside possibly my favorite building in the whole of Buenos Aires – good coffee, service and surroundings – this one’s a keeper!
• BA Authenticity: (4/5) In time, this should become an Avenida de Mayo classic, mainly due to the location inside an authentic Buenos Aires architectural masterpiece
• Value: (3/5) The cafe prices are little on the steep side (the food looks even more so, but I did not try that yet), but the service, quality and location more than make up for that…

Buenos Aires Argentina Guide Special Tip

Grab a newspaper, a coffee, and watch the world go by… you are now indulging in an age-old porteño ritual that plays a large part in daily life in Buenos Aires, and doing so inside one of the city’s most interesting architectural structures…

[The Palacio Barolo building and cafe are featured on my suggested walking tour of Buenos Aires City Center, which can also by booked as a private walking tour of Buenos Aires, personally guided by me]

This roundup post is late, as usual, so no messing around this week folks… let’s just get straight into the Buenos Aires, Argentina linky goodness from last week…

Buenos Aires Argentina Blog Posts of the Week

• Matt Bites, who appears to be thoroughly enjoying a holiday in Buenos Aires and the general Rio de la Plata area, penned a mouthwatering review of the La Cabrera parrilla in Palermo Viejo, one of the best places to eat meat in BA. Although… drinking Torrontes instead of Malbec wine as an accompaniment to steak… don’t they kill for such crimes against Argentine sensibilities round these parts?
• Matt Chesterton, editor of the Time Out guides to Buenos Aires, has been writing a fantastic series about hotels in Buenos Aires… my runaway favorite has to be his post on classic hotels in BA, mainly for his wedding night anecdote from the Hotel Castelar.. seriously, a must read!
• I couldn’t find a third Matthew to make this a ‘Mattrick’ of top blog posts (were there any other Matts writing about BA this week?)… so we’ll have to make do with the closest I could find…a Marc. He recently announced on Asado Argentina that he has launched a new photo blog of southern Argentina. OK, so it’s not Buenos Aires… but from time to time we city dwellers need to be reminded that real life does exist outside of the metropolis, and his first few pictures provide some beautiful examples of that fact

Things to See and Do in Buenos Aires

• The Argentina Travel blog had some more great tips and reviews this week for things to see and do in Buenos Aires, including the slightly totally crazy Parque Tierra Santa, a Christian theme park that sees an 18 meter Jesus Christ (!) resurrected every half hour. They also have the lowdown on the equally aesthetically pleasing Flor de Metal sculpture and El Ateneo bookshop, both to be found in the barrio of Recoleta
• More lovely pictures from Karine this week, featuring the Palacio de Tribunales building, a pretty San Telmo antiques shop, the Falklands war memorial monument in Plaza San Martin, and some Palacio Barolo facts and pictures, one of my favorite buildings in Buenos Aires, on one of my favorite streets, Avenida de Mayo
• A new entrant to the now splitting-at-the-seams Buenos Aires blogosphere is Discovering BA. Their first few posts include one with a nice picture and comment on another of my favorite buildings here, the French Embassy, jutting out there down at the end of 9 de Julio. One thing though… their blog has me down as ‘A Blog about BA Blogs‘ in their link list… a sign that maybe I should be cutting down on these roundups and ramping up on my own posts, maybe?
• Robert keeps us bang up to date on the renovations and new shade of pink being given to the Casa Rosada (Pink House), the presidential HQ of Argentina based in Plaza de Mayo. Looks like things are coming along really nicely!

Buenos Aires Info, News and General Comments

• Diva has been ranting and raving a lot lately – but it is all very entertaining so I hope she keeps it up, even if it does no good for her blood pressure. This week, she reveals the secret language of Argentine girls, questions why portenos are so proud of themselves, defines the intriguing Argentine phenomenon known as El Chanta (watch out for even more ranting and raving from anonymous commenters!), and analyzes a range of porteno men in their twenties. Hard-hitting stuff, keep it up Diva!

Buenos Aires Restaurants, Food & Drink

• In between rants Diva also found time to review one of her favorite restaurants in Buenos Aires, an Armenian restaurant in Palermo Soho called Sarkis, which was also reviewed a long while back by Saltshaker – both of these recommendations means that this place is easily number 1 on my restaurants to visit list right now – I’m hungry just thinking about it!
• After our recent trip to the Buller Pub in Recoleta, Ken wrote down our ‘imaginative’ joint tasting notes on the six Buller beers, and I soon followed suit with my own review of the Buller’s Recoleta BrewPub, which kicks off what will surely be a very enjoyable (for me) series of postings on where to find the best beer in Buenos Aires
• Robert is trudging through a similar quest to my beer holy grail, that of finding the best wines available in the shops of Buenos Aires. Oh the hardships we go through in the name of good blogging! You can read his latest finds in Divino Vino 9 – this week all from a Patagonian winery called Bodega NQN
• Slightly less appealing, but still very much a feature of Buenos Aires cuisine, is the honest, humble Super Pancho. Ken gets into the local spirit and tries out this most inexpensive of Argentine snacks

Funny or Odd Stuff in Buenos Aires

• A very strange story to end with this week. Ian from Goodairs reports that La Doce (The Twelth Man), the hardcore supporters of Boca Juniors football team, are exporting their special brand of hooliganism to the rest of the world for profit. Today Columbia and Mexico are taking advantage, but who knows, soon Rochdale vs Accrington Stanley in English League Division two will be seeing chants of “you can stick your flatcap up your ar*e”, before mass riots ensue, whippets and pint tankards flying in all directions.

Sorry about the lame/irrelevant Northern England football jokes at the end there, I just get carried away sometimes! See you all next week for another Buenos Aires blog roundup!

Sorry I’m late with the Buenos Aires blog roundup this week guys… I have been busy as usual, and at the weekend wrote what would have been one of my best blog posts of all time (seriously!), only for my PC to crash just before I clicked publish, losing the whole thing! I was so annoyed that I couldn’t bring myself to try posting something again until now… that will learn me for not updating to the new version of Wordpress (my blogging software), which apparently has an auto-save feature. Silly me.

Anyway, onto the blog roundup, which this week inaugurates a new feature… a section for my most favorite posts of the week!

Buenos Aires Blog Posts of the Week

• I just loved Ken’s description of the dog walkers in Buenos Aires and the accompanying picture, though not quite as much as I love to see the dog walkers with their huge packs of mutts each morning as I walk to catch the bus to work
• I always like a good post about the prevalence of mullets in Buenos Aires. And Isabelle Lagarde’s blog entry in this field certainly doesn’t disappoint
• OK, so Buenos Aires isn’t Paris. But it does have some lovely Parisian-esque domes, which came into Robert’s ‘Line of Sight’ this week. I hope he didn’t get a crick in his neck…

Things to See and Do in Buenos Aires

• My favorite pictures from Karine this week were of colorful Caminito with La Boca’s symbolic old transporter bridge hiding away in the back, an amazing traffic jam on Av. 9 de Julio, the widest avenue in the world, a shot of the idyllic Palermo parks, and a nice collection of riverside Puerto Madero pictures, from the newest, and most expensive, barrio in Buenos Aires
• Being a lazy so and so, it certainly isn’t on my list of things to do in Buenos Aires, but the Argentina Travel blog wrote a post on where to run in Buenos Aires, for those who are that way inclined. Suitably, in this sweltering weather, the post was soon followed by advice on how to escape the Buenos Aires heat. At this time of year, I would certainly recommend the latter over the former
• Riding the bus in Buenos Aires, when it’s not too busy, is something I usually enjoy doing. Jeff evidently thinks so too, at least enough to start a blog post series called “On the Bus in Buenos Aires“
• Tango Cherie has a tip for those thinking of taking Tango classes in Buenos Aires: remember that you get what you pay for with Tango classes, as in most of life
• Ken has a nice post on the pedestrian shopping street Florida, where you can buy tacky Buenos Aires fridge magnets to your heart’s content

Buenos Aires Info, News and General Comments

• Karine notes that an International Living survey and article has rated Argentina in the top ten countries of the world to live in. Yet more good press for Argentina!
• Deby from Tango Spam provides some interesting food for thought for those thinking about coming to BA for good with her three post series entitled “Why do you want to live here?” Here is Part 2 and Part 3
• Apparently, Palermo Viejo is up there with the likes of Milan for fashion these days
• Diva gets a link to her blog from the official city of Buenos Aires government blog. I make my plea to them now: please link to me too! I would do a little dance…
• There is a new Buenos Aires blogger in town, with a great/lame (delete as appropriate) name to boot: Disco Shawn. He thinks that Buenos Aires is getting a little too over hyped, and I agree to an extent, though personally I always like to see BA getting good press, even if it is not giving a 100% true picture of the city

Buenos Aires Restaurants, Food and Drink

• The Argentina Travel Blog has two good restaurant reviews this week, of Business – Sushi Libre, a pretty good all you can eat Sushi establishment in Recoleta, and Manos Costumbristas, a place for simple Tucuman province food near the Microcentro, which sounds quite interesting in that they only have two things on the menu – empanadas and tamales, and apparently they have proper hot sauce too – a valuable commodity for expats in Buenos Aires
• Fernet Branca. Try it when you’re in Buenos Aires, if you dare. And yes, that’s me in the comments section saying that Fernet ‘tastes of Catholicism’. It does!

Funny or Odd Things in Buenos Aires

• ArJewTino has some fun putting last week’s Clarin story about Buenos Aires bloggers through the misfiring Babel Fish online translator. Although now he has me wondering too… maybe Ian of Goodairs really does talk like that?
• Diva writes in her usual irreverent style about the tourist dress code in Buenos Aires
• This strikes me as quite odd, but interesting all the same: the Buenos Aires Subte is holding a love letter contest, as noted by Maya of the Sexy Spanish Club.

Thanks again to my readers for reading and the other Buenos Aires bloggers for their continued hard blogging – without you, I would be nothing. Or at least this blog roundup post would be.

Humberto 1º 340 (between Defensa & Balcarce), San Telmo

[Open Monday - Saturday, 8:30am to Midday and 4pm to 7pm. Sundays, 1pm to 6pm.]

I like churches.

Born and raised a good Catholic boy, I was.

…but that has nothing to do with why I like churches. I’m an agnostic, and instead like them because God generally gets some of the best architecture around. And in Buenos Aires it’s no different. So, this is the start of an attempted series on churches in BA, which may well be spread out over several years, cunningly hiding it’s series-ness from view.

The San Pedro Gonzalez Telmo church (try saying that after a few pints), is also known as the Nuestra Señora de Belén (Our Lady of Belen) church. A good church can never have too many names in my book.

A Little Church History

Some Jesuits named Blanqui, Bautista, Primoli and Schmidt designed the original and kicked off the building in 1734. That makes it one of the oldest churches in the city. But not the oldest, which I’ll cover at some point soon I guess. The church’s architecture was then added to and restored a fair few times up to the present, which accounts for it’s lovely eclectic style. Apparently it is ‘neo-colonial’. I prefer to call it ‘fancy iced wedding cake’:

It’s very hard to get a decent picture of the church because the street is of the normal narrow, cobbled San Telmo ilk, and there are large trees getting in on the act – some cheeky leaves can be seen intruding on the top right corner of that photo.

Of course, it is a ‘National Historic Monument’. Isn’t everything? (I believe that ‘joke’ will only get a laugh among Buenos Aires tour guides. And probably not even then)

San Pedro Gonzalez Telmo

Up the top of the church, there in the middle, you can see San Pedro Gonzalez Telmo himself. He was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest, born in Astorga (Spain) in 1190, and devoted his life to enlightening the poor. I wonder what old Pedro Telmo would think of all the saucy Tango dancing that goes on in his barrio now? On second thoughts, he is also the patron saint of Spanish sailors, so I’m sure that he’s not so easily shocked these day.

The inside of the church isn’t all that compared the the beautifully decorative exterior… some nice oil paintings, your usual pulpit… it is more the quiet and peace that draws me within churches such as this. And that’s not something easily found in Buenos Aires city.

Yellow Fever

Of course, life is not all lovely architecture and peaceful surrounds. On the outside of the church a plaque is found, commemorating the San Telmo locals that died in the terrible yellow fever outbreak of 1871:

It was that outbreak that also changed the face of Buenos Aires a little. Previously, San Telmo was home to the rich elite of the city. The yellow fever outbreak forced them out of the area, and they found a new home slightly further north, in Recoleta, which remains the home of the extravagantly wealthy to this day. San Telmo turned into an area of fading grandeur that now makes it so attractive to visitors, while in Recoleta the dazzling French architecture that delights tourists in equal measures was erected by the upper classes.

Still, I’d imagine that’s no consolation to the victims of yellow fever