The Recoleta Cemetery

We had four different excursions this week.  The first trip was to the colorful town of La Boca, which I discussed in my previous blog.  The next was to the infamous Recoleta Cemetery where Evita Peron is buried.  The cemetery was not what I expected, it was more like a town than a cemetery.  There were rows and rows of elaborate mausoleums for all of the wealthy and important families of Buenos Aires. Some of the mausoleums were decorated with personal belongings and photographs of the people buried inside, while others had intricate statues and sculptures to represent their life and/or their death.  For example, certain symbols, like a cracked column, indicate that the person died young, before their time.  Other sculptures depicted tragic scenes of a mother grieving her baby, or a soldier killed in action.  It was actually a beautiful place, with ivy overgrowing the tombs and gorgeous stained glass windows in some of the mausoleums. 

Above is a picture of a tomb I described earlier where a mother is depicted as mourning her baby.  She is crying over a cradle while an angel carries her baby up to heaven.  It his hard to see from this picture but there is also a broken column carved into this grave.

One aspect of the cemetery that I found especially surprising was how open the graves of the famous people were. The graves of a lot of ex-presidents are in this cemetery and anyone can walk right up to them and take a look.  It seems like it would be easy to vandalize these graves, and it was shocking because these kind of graves are much more guarded in the United States.

The mausoleum of Evita was surprisingly small and plain.  I was expecting a great statue in her memory, but there was none.  Her grave is located down a narrow corridor and isn't really anything special.  However, it is definitely a tourist attraction and we had to wait in line to look at it.