The Recoleta Cemetery is a famous necropolis located in the city of Buenos Aires ( Argentina ). The squares that surround the cemetery constitute a popular recreation area. Recoleta is one of the most distinguished neighborhoods in the city and the cemetery honors that characteristic since the largest number of personalities in Argentina are buried. The motto of the cemetery is “Expectamus Dóminum” (‘We wait for the Lord’).
Summary
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- 1 History
- 1 Origin of the prestige of the neighborhood
- 2 Description
- 3 Some of the personalities buried in La Recoleta
- 4 See also
- 5 Sources
History
In 1732, the friars of the Barefoot Recollect Order arrived in this area, which at the beginning of the 18th century was on the outskirts of the city of Buenos Aires. They built a convent and a church in the place with the name of the Virgen del Pilar.
Currently the Basilica of the Lady of Pilar is a national historical monument. The locals ended up calling the church of the Recollects simply the Recoleta, a name that was extended to the entire area. When the order was dissolved on November 17, 1822 , the convent’s garden was converted into the first public cemetery in the city of Buenos Aires.
Those responsible for its creation were Governor Martín Rodríguez (his remains rest in the cemetery) and his Minister of Government, the infamous Bernardino Rivadavia (who was President of Argentina under the orders of the British Empire). Its first two inhabitants were the freed black boy Juan Benito and the young María Dolores Maciel.
Origin of neighborhood prestige
During the 1870s , as a consequence of the yellow fever epidemic that devastated the city, many upper-class porteños left the central neighborhoods of San Telmo and Montserrat and moved to the northern part of the city, to Recoleta. By becoming a high-class neighborhood, the cemetery became the final resting place of the most prestigious and powerful families in Buenos Aires. At the same time , the Chacarita Cemetery (or West Cemetery, as opposed to the North Cemetery) was inaugurated .
Description
The entrance to the cemetery is through a Greek Doric porch without a base, completed during one of its great reforms ordered in 1881 by the mayor of the Municipality, Torcuato de Alvear.
The property has 4,800 vaults distributed over 54,843 square meters. The cemetery is home to several marble mausoleums, decorated with statues, in a wide variety of architectural styles. It is organized in blocks, with wide tree-lined avenues leading to side alleys lined with mausoleums and vaults. There is a wide central roundabout from where the main avenues depart, with a sculpture of Christ made by the sculptor Pedro Zonza Briano , in 1914 .
Each mausoleum features the family name carved into the façade; bronze plaques for individual members are usually added to the front.
In a poem, the Buenos Aires writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) fantasized about being buried in this place, but in the end it was not so, since -according to his will- he is buried in the city of Geneva ( Switzerland ).
