What to do in Recoleta, Buenos Aires
- Will Gerson
- Feb 23
- 2 min read
Recoleta
Described as Buenos Aires’s most elegant neighborhood, Recoleta is an upper-class barrio home to some of the city’s most expensive real estate. Though it has less to offer than Palermo in terms of restaurants and bars, its leafy streets make for excellent strolling, and its classic, refined architecture transports visitors back to the golden age of Buenos Aires.
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Points of Interest
Cementerio de la Recoleta
The neighborhood’s foremost attraction is its monumental cemetery, home to the graves of prominent Argentines like national icon Eva Perón, former presidents Julio Argentino Roca and Hipólito Yrigoyen, and the writer Adolfo Bioy Casares. The cemetery covers 14 acres and contains more than 4,500 vaults, including grand mausoleums designed in styles such as Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Baroque, and neo-Gothic. The cemetery is laid out like a city, with its grid of walkways forming a labyrinth of tombs. You can spend hours exploring each turn, marveling at the ornate decoration of the structures and learning about the lives of those entombed within.
Café La Biela
Opposite the cemetery sits La Biela, one of the city’s most famous cafes. Step inside the front door and you will be greeted by life-size statues of writer Jorge Luis Borges and his friend Adolfo Bioy Casares, who frequented the cafe along with other writers and artists. The wooden interior is decorated with old racing memorabilia, a nod to the cafe’s history as a meeting place for champion racing drivers, among them five-time Formula One champion Juan Manuel Fangio. Outside is a large terrace under the shade of an enormous rubber tree.
El Ateneo Grand Splendid
Buenos Aires’s most famous bookstore is housed in a former theater on Avenida Santa Fe, one of the city’s main thoroughfares. The theater, Teatro Gran Splendid, opened in 1919, hosted performances by none less than the great Carlos Gardel, but in 2000 it was refurbished and converted into a four-story bookstore. Come to marvel at the beauty of its interior and the ceiling frescoes, but don’t expect to find a quiet place to read: the bookstore is visited by over one million people every year.
