Rosie and The Operator are off to visit Recoleta Cemetary, or as its unofficial, more interesting name is known as, The City of The Dead, in the suburb of Recoleta in Buenos Aires. Looking at it from up high, it pretty much does take up a whole city suburb.
It’s a good few kilometers from our apartment in San Telmo to the Cemetery so rather than muck around and take a couple of subway trains we opt for the easy way of getting there and call an UBER as per the advice of our apartment host. Its morning rush hour in Buenos Aires when we set out, drive time is forty mins but for a taxi ride that is $7nzd….who’s counting, its way to easy and inexpensive.
Walking up to the high brick wall that surrounds the cemetery and stretches the whole city block for nearly as far as the eye can see Rosie knew this was somewhere pretty special as she entered. Walking between the tall Doric pillars of the gate into the cemetery and seeing what was spread before her just confirmed it.
The wide avenue at the entrance of the cemetery was lined with tall palm trees and stone seating flanked the edges of the cobbled road. A labyrinth of cobbled alley ways led off this main artery in twists and turns. Your first impression is that this place is full of tiny houses…yes, really!
The mausoleums where the dead are buried are miniature versions of the grandeur that these well to do notable, famous, infamous and wealthy Argentine’s lived in when they were alive. They literally built a city within the city, mirroring the lavishness of their lives outside of the cemetery walls….
Established in 1822, There are 4691 mausoleums which are spread over 15 hectares and each memorial is completely different, utterly opulent and incredibly beautiful and poignant. Wandering around, it is hard sometimes to tell where the cemetery ends and the city starts if it wasn’t for the boundary wall.
Many of the cemetery’s older, elaborate tombs were constructed with imported French or Italian materials. The architecture, (yes, some of these mausoleums are that big, and it was quite the thing to engage one of the many famous mausoleum designers and sculptors of the day), varies throughout this City of the Dead from Art Deco to Baroque and are a photographer’s dream!
This cemetery has also been called The City of Angels as there literally are so many angel statues as you walk around. Crane your neck and many are sitting atop the mausoleums heralding in or guiding the dearly departed to heaven or else they appear to be consoling and comforting the mourners below. Wait a minute, there are a lot here that look the same…apparently a lot of the smaller angel sculptures were ordered from a catalog and shipped from France, Italy or Spain – resulting in identical sculptures appearing on different tombs around the cemetery.
Rosie is surprised how you can peep into the mausoleums and see the full length coffins sitting there on shelves, like they have been placed there yesterday. Small chapels, some with furniture for seating are set up inside, as well as small alters and rugs which cover the floor in others. Remember the majority of these ‘tiny houses’ are not just for one person, they house the remains of entire families. Within the 4691 sites, there are over 30,000 people interred.
Cemetery cleaner are also on duty, walking around with buckets and huge feather dusters. They have keys to some of the mausoleums they are caretakers for and, as in the case of this one below…have propped the door open for…abit of air?
Plus, the stories of those that are buried here…they are good, so very good, don’t worry….here are a few Rosie will share.
Rufina Cambaceres – Died 1902 – On the day of her 19th birthday, while getting ready to attend the Opera, Rufina suddenly and without warning collapsed to the floor…..the doctor came immediately over and pronounced her dead. As per the customs of the day she was interned and sealed in the family mausoleum the next day.
A few days after the funeral, a cemetery worker found that the coffin had moved within the crypt……..and the lid was broken…..Fearing grave robbery, he opened it to find something even worse—scratch marks covering the inside of the coffin, and Rufina dead. Hands and face scratched from trying to break her way out of the coffin.
The explanation doctors were said to have given is that Rufina had suffered an attack of “catalepsy”, a classic death like coma from which she later awakened in her coffin, only to have died of exhaustion and shock for trying break her way out.
Rufina was ‘reburied’ and her grief stricken mother built this beautiful white-marble mausoleum with Rufina’s life-size statue standing in front of the crypt trying to open the door.
An enormous mausoleum commemorates the life of Salvador del Carril and his wife Tiburcia Domínguez. The weird thing is, the bust and statue depicting the two have their backs to each other. The story goes that del Carril, an important figure in Argentinian politics, was outraged by his wife’s spending. He got so angry that he published a letter in major newspapers advising merchants that he’d no longer be paying for any of his wife’s expenditures. That didn’t go over well with Tiburcia who published her own letter describing what a horrible man her husband was and vowing she’d never speak to him again.
Although they stayed together, she apparently kept her promise and didn’t speak to her husband for the remaining 20 years of his life. Tiburcia lived another 15 years longer than her husband throwing lavish parties with the money that was left. Before she died in 1898, she requested that her bust look away from her husband. Ouch…holding a grudge for eternity can’t be good.
Liliana Crociati was the daughter of Jose, one of the great Italian hairdressers in Buenos Aires. Liliana married Juan Szaszak, and they honeymooned in the south of Argentina, where an avalanche buried half of their hotel but left the couple unharmed.
The following year, however, in 1970, in Insbruck, Austria, another snowy landslide killed Liliana. Her father decided to build a mausoleum of his daughter, with her hair blowing in the wind, dressed in her wedding dress, along with her dog Sabú.
In her crypt, the coffin is covered by Indian saris, which were the counterpane in Liliana’s childhood home. Pictures of her youth decorate the monument. Her father wrote a poem that can be read in the bronze plaque: “Per che, per che”. Some decades later, Lilian’s husband died in a road accident, attempting to drive his car in a snow blizzard.
Eva (Evita) Peron – No one goes to Recoleta cemetery without a visit to Evita’s grave. By Recoleta standards the Argentine First Ladys final resting place, however, is quite nondescript. Three years after former First Lady Perón died of cancer in 1952, her body was removed by the Argentine military in the wake of a coup that deposed her husband, President Juan Perón.
The body then went on a transatlantic odyssey for nearly twenty years before finally being returned to the Duarte Family mausoleum in Recoleta Cemetery. She now lies in a crypt five meters underground, heavily fortified to ensure that no one can disturb the remains of Argentina’s most beloved and controversial First Lady.
Tomás Guido – was an important general in the Argentine War of Independence, his tomb is unlike any other at Recoleta. It is a rough-looking thing made of irregular shaped rocks. His son, poet and politician Carlos Guido y Spano, said: “Anyone can hire builders and artists. Out of respect for my father, I’m building this tomb myself, one rock at a time.”
David Alleno – Died 1910, was born into a family that worked in the funeral business David looked after the mausoleums in the Recoleta cemetery. Over time he managed to acquire a small, narrow plot in the cemetery where he worked for over thirty years.
The story became a legend when David traveled to Genoa to buy a block of Carrera marble and commissioned a famous sculptor to sculpt him, as a caretaker with all his equipment: a bunch of keys, a broom, a watering can and a feather duster.
On the day the sculpture was finished and put in place ….he took his own life. It is said his ghost walks the paths and you can hear his jangling keys…..
The mausoleums that have been modernised, minimalised and made of glass are incredible, they look more like the retail outlets where you go to buy your coffin. On the other hand there is a high percentage of mausoleums that are in a bad state of disrepair and look like no one has been near them for centuries. The plaster is crumbling or the walls have started collapsing around the casket that is still inside.
The burning question on Rosies lips was what happens to these derelict and unkept mausoleums in an area where this is prime real estate?
Well, apparently a grave in this cemetery is bought for eternity; it can never be taken from you. Even if the annual fee for maintenance is not paid, the grave will not be cleared. All the government will do in the course of time is to shore up the tomb to prevent its collapse as is the case with a lot of sites in this cemetery.
The cemetery is full, no more mausoleums can be built as there is no space, it is possible, however, to buy an existing grave. But what if the owner is unknown and the tomb appears abandoned? Argentina has a solution, similar to the way you can obtain a piece of fallow land whose owner is invisible and unknown. If you start paying the maintenance tax over twenty years, and if during those years no one claims the grave, you become the rightful owner. Sure, it a long game, and, be aware though, that with the purchase comes the responsibility which is now all yours, of clearing the tomb and graves of those already there.
Rosie and The Operator spent a good 2.5 hours wandering around Recoleta Cemetery and the time just flew. We downloaded the cemetery app and it lead to a host of interesting graves of the rich and famous from which Rosie got her above stories from. We never saw it all and Rosie could easily go back again. For those that like a group guided tour this is possible too with a host of walking tour companies offering deals and also private guides. On Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1100 there is a ‘Free’ walking tour for 1.5 hours in English that costs $300 ARP per person that starts at the gates of the cemetery….no booking necessary, you just turn up.
Stay tuned, tomorrow Rosie and The Operator are off to explore more of the giant, sprawling city which is Buenos Aires. Starting with a stroll down the famous Avenida de Mayo and visiting some quirky and beautiful places along the way.
