La Recoleta Cemetery
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La Recoleta Cemetery is a famous cemetery located in the Recoleta district of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The fashionable area around the cemetery is home to some of the city's wealthiest citizens, who frown on the "wrong" people (Eva Perón, for example)being buried there next to some of the country's most influential people including a number of presidents and political leaders.
Entrance to the cemetery is through neo-classical gates with tall Greek columns. The cemetery contains many elaborate marble mausoleums, decorated with statues, in a wide variety of architectural styles. The entire cemetery is laid out in sections like city blocks, with wide tree-lined main walkways branching into sidewalks filled with mausoleums.
While many of the mausoleums are in fine shape and well-maintained, others have fallen into disrepair...several can be found with broken glass, littered with rubbish, and on occassion you might find a mausoleum being used as a janitorial supply closet, with cleaning and maitenance products stored on top of coffins!
Each mausoleum bears the family name etched into the façade; brass or bronze plaques are added to the front for particular family members. La Recoleta is one of those cemeteries where the tradition of engraving a death date but no birth date has been maintained.
One interesting and unique aspect of La Recoleta is a colony of feral cats that resides within the gates...although they can be spotted anytime, they tend to gather in groups of dozens near closing-time, when some locals feed them.
Some of the famous interred in La Recoleta Cemetery are:
- Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810-1884), writer, politician, lawyer
- Luis César Amadori (1902-1977), poet, composer
- Susan Barrantes, (1937-1998), mother of Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York
- Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914-1999), author
- Juan Manuel Fangio (1911-1995), F1 champion race car driver
- Luis Firpo (1894-1960), heavyweight boxer, "The Wild Bull of the Pampas"
- Oliverio Girondo (1891-1967), poet, journalist
- José Hernandez (1834-1886), writer
- Enrique Larreta (1875-1961), writer
- Luis F. Leloir (1906-1987), scientist, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry
- Eduardo Mallea (1903-1982), novelist, essayist
- Carlos Menditeguy (1915-1973), race car driver and sportsman
- Bartolomé Mitre (1821-1906), soldier, author, statesman
- Victoria Ocampo (1890-1979), writer, publisher
- Carlos Pellegrini (1846-1906), statesman
- Eva Perón (1919-1952), First Lady of Argentina
- Honorio Pueyrredón (1876-1945), educator, statesman
- Dante Quinterno (1909-2003), cartoonist
- Carlos Saavedra Lamas (1878-1959) statesman, Nobel Peace Prize winner
- Domingo Sarmiento (1811-1888), writer, statesman
- Juan Facundo Quiroga (1790-1835), statesman (the title subject of one of the aforementioned Sarmiento's most famous works, his remains were only recently discovered in the cemetery)
See also: List of other famous cemeterieses:Cementerio de La Recoleta