Documenting Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires since 2007
Author: Robert
A life-long statesman, Quintana held a number of important positions during his political career, mainly in Congress. He eventually rose to be among the political elite & won the presidency in 1904. The following year, an uprising by the UCR got his term off to a shaky start. Already in his 70s, Quintana’s health was weakened by having to deal with the uprising. A few months later an anarchist from Spain tried to assassinate Quintana. The revolver failed to go off, but Quintana was so distraught from the incident that he eventually stepped down from office & his Vice President took over. Quintana died a few months later in 1906.
What’s most striking about this tomb is its grandeur & elegance. It’s so large that you really have to step back in order to appreciate the decoration. Also, the effigy of Quintana literally resting in peace is not common in Recoleta Cemetery. Sculptures usually take the form of the living person (as in the boxer Luis Ángel Firpo) or heavenly figures such as angels & cherubs. It’s certainly an elegant exception to the norm:
The interior of the vault is oddly divided. The left side door leads downstairs to dark underground storage. On the right side, another door opens to a small staircase leading up to the main altar. An Omega shines through a beautiful piece of Art Nouveau stained glass, while the Alpha is above the door & can only be viewed from the interior:
One of the most photographed statues in Recoleta Cemetery, mainly because of its innocence & its location… the Francisco Gómez family vault is on the junction of two broad walkways leading to the tomb of Eva Perón.
Leave a CommentBy early 2006, my general map was complete. But the entire project was put on hold since my walking tours were booming. It became impossible to juggle everything. Also, as I did more tours of downtown Buenos Aires, it seemed that a guidebook to that area was more important so I shifted focus to that.
At the same time, the Friends’ Association of Recoleta Cemetery (ADACRE) began publishing a map & selling it at the front gate for 4 pesos [Update: 2009 price is 6 pesos, 2011 price is 8 pesos]. Proceeds went to fund recent restoration work not done by any national or city organization in decades. Good for them. Although much better than previous maps, even their effort needed some improvement:
Both the foldable square format & the price were right. And 159 tombs were listed… many more than the 89 from the previous map. The interior contained a few black & white photos with a brief historical summary in Spanish, French, English & German. So far, so good.
But in an effort to be more inclusive, the design suffered. Due to space constraints, the only text that could accompany each name was a single word: President, poet, writer, politician. Most people outside Latin America have probably never heard of these people before, & a one-word biography seems worse than nothing at all. Finally, the list of personalities is not in alphabetical order & is not practical if you want to look for someone in particular:
But the biggest problem was the actual map itself. It looks like someone took the hand-drawn map pictured in Part 1 of this series, scanned it, & used it without editing anything. Lines are crooked & the tomb divisions are incorrect. The numbers used are placed haphazardly… no order at all. In the photo below, the entrance is shown with a huge range of numbers (#1, #42, #71 & #146). For easy use, the map should be arranged numerically or alphabetically, but this was neither:
The ADACRE map was by far the best yet, but apparently the graphic designer has little experience.
Read the complete story in the following posts titled “map development”: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Part 6 & Part 7. Good news! The PDF guidebook is now available.
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A quick glance at the sidebar reveals a new page added: Monumento Histórico Nacional. A work in progress, all tombs listed as part of national heritage will be documented here. Surprisingly enough, there are only 90 on the list.
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