La Recoleta Cemetery

This place is even better than the Key West cemetery except all the names are unknown to me. 

Eva Peron always attracts visitors: 

I took this photo of a crypt using the flash. It was otherwise just a black hole. 

I have always like cemeteries, especially the ones with interesting burial methods and even more so if they display history to connect you to the city. Buenos Aires set aside land for a cemetery in 1822, a co project which has become world renowned for beautiful if eccentric tombs famous around the world.

There were only two graves was remotely familiar with, Eva Perón buried in the Duarte family crypt and Domingo Sarmiento, 7th President of Argentina. 

I learned about him after we camped on the shores of Lake Sarmiento in Chile in December 2024 and I was curious where the name came from. 

During Argentina’s 19th centrifugal struggles the Unitarian party wanted a European centric enlightened republic of which Sarmiento was one, but the Federalists on the other side saw them as elitists working at the expense of the poor.  Sarmiento didn’t lot of his life in exile including in Chile a country he admired for its progressive corruption free politics so I guess they figured naming a Patagonian lake after him

might be a good idea. He has a large tomb in the cemetery with lots of plaques from his supporters:

One of the oddities of this cemetery is how people stick bronze plaques on the tombs of friends or colleagues to honor the dead on the anniversary of their death. 

Person’s tomb is actually quite low key as these things go in La Recoleta.

Aside from these two there was no one familiar to me buried here which was rather liberating. It cost $18 to get in which seemed steep but after I photographed the two tombs I knew I wandered at will among the elaborate and crumbling crypts.  

This striking statue is of a 19 year old skater, a member of the River Plate Skate Club who died in 2018 in a car accident. 

And there she is, boasting the newest statue in the cemetery. 

This is an actual working cemetery and this tomb is a reminder of that. Despite the hordes of tourists taking pictures La Recoleta is where families bury their dead and there is no space devoted to explanations or headlines about the occupants. 

Aside from these two plaques from friends and colleagues the other oddity have never seen elsewhere is that of putting coffins in crypts and leaving them on display. 

This detail photographed the glass is of a mature woman cremated. At first glance I thought it was the coffin of an infant. 

There they all just dumped in the crypt which I thought was weird. 

It looks more like a funeral home than a tomb but I guess that’s how they like it. 

Exit this way, back to life and the bustle of the Buenos Aires.