Plaza de Mayo: The Square Where a Nation Keeps Being Made

The full story of Plaza de Mayo: The Square Where a Nation Keeps Being Made, in words. Prefer to listen? Play it narrated, from home or on location.

1. 1. Casa Rosada: The Balcony and the Bombs

   Stop here at the corner of the square. The long pink building across the railings is the Casa Rosada, the pink house, where the president works. Power has sat on this spot for more than four centuries. A Spanish fort went up here in fifteen ninety-four and was rebuilt as a castle with a moat. In the eighteen eighties two separate buildings, a post office and a government palace, were joined by the great arch at the centre of the facade, in eighteen eighty-six, and the palace was finished in eighteen ninety-eight. The government's own history credits President Sarmiento with the pink paint. The story that the colour mixes the red and white of two warring parties is tradition, and the one about ox blood is a legend.

   The balconies over the square are where this country's twentieth century was performed. In October nineteen forty-five, Juan Peron spoke from here at night to a crowd that had filled the square to demand his release. Peronists count that night as the movement's birth. In May nineteen fifty-two, Eva Peron gave her last speech here, so ill that he held her at the waist. In April nineteen eighty-two, during the war over the Falklands, the dictator Leopoldo Galtieri told the crowd that if the British wanted to come, let them come. In June nineteen eighty-six the balcony belonged to Diego Maradona and the world champions. And in December two thousand and one, while police cleared the square below, a president who had just resigned was lifted off the roof by helicopter.

   Now, with the pink palace in front of you, look to the right, across Hipolito Yrigoyen Street and past the end of the palace. The huge pale stone building on the far corner, beyond the street that runs south, is the Palacio de Hacienda, the economy ministry. On the sixteenth of June, nineteen fifty-five, navy and air force planes bombed this square, trying to kill Peron. The state's later investigation identified at least three hundred and eight dead. Marks from that day are still in the stone of that ministry's front. The country bombed its own square. Keep that in mind at every stop.

   Now walk into the square toward the white obelisk at its centre, and stop at the low railing around it.

2. 2. May Pyramid: The Mothers' Circle

   This white obelisk is the May Pyramid, the oldest patriotic monument in the city. It went up in a hurry for the first anniversary of the twenty-fifth of May, eighteen ten, the day this city pushed the Spanish viceroy aside and set up its own government. But careful. That government still ruled in the name of the captive Spanish king. Independence was declared six years later, far to the north, in Tucuman. The nation was not born here in a single day. It has been made here, again and again.

   The first pyramid, of eighteen eleven, was hollow brick, about fourteen metres tall. In eighteen fifty-six it was not pulled down. It was wrapped. The bigger pyramid you see was built around it, and the original is still inside. In nineteen twelve the whole monument was dragged sixty-three metres east on rails, to the centre of the square, where it was to be wrapped a third time, inside a grand Monument to the Revolution. That monument was never built.

   Now look down at the paving around its base. The white headscarves painted there belong to the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. In April nineteen seventy-seven, under the military dictatorship, fourteen women whose children had been taken came here to ask where they were. The police told them to keep moving, so they walked, two by two, in a circle around this pyramid. One of them later said the police created the march. They settled on Thursdays, the story goes, because Friday was witches' day. That October, to find each other in the crowd at a pilgrimage, they wore their children's cloth nappies over their hair. The nappy became the white headscarf.

   In December nineteen seventy-seven, a navy officer who had joined them, posing as a grieving brother, pointed them out. Three founding mothers were kidnapped and murdered, among them Azucena Villaflor, who had called that first meeting. Her remains were identified in two thousand and five, and her ashes were placed here, at the foot of the pyramid. When the square was renovated in two thousand and eighteen, the city lifted the painted tiles and gave them to the Mothers, and the scarves around you were painted again by the Mothers and their supporters.

   Now walk to the north side of the square, toward the building with the row of tall columns, and stop at the edge of the square, facing it.

3. 3. Metropolitan Cathedral: The General's Tilted Tomb

   Across Avenida Rivadavia is the Metropolitan Cathedral, and it does not look much like a church. Twelve columns and a triangular pediment: it looks like a parliament. The front was designed in eighteen twenty-two by a French architect, Prosper Catelin, on the model of the Palais Bourbon in Paris, the seat of the French lower house. The carving in the pediment, finished in the eighteen sixties, shows the biblical Jacob meeting his son Joseph in Egypt.

   Inside, off the right-hand aisle, is the tomb of Jose de San Martin, the general who led an army over the Andes to free Chile, and then carried the war to Peru by sea. He died in exile in France, and his remains came home in May eighteen eighty. His mausoleum is by the French sculptor Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, and three female figures stand around it: Argentina, Chile and Peru. Grenadiers of the mounted regiment San Martin himself founded in eighteen twelve stand guard at the chapel, and every two hours a relief marches over from the Casa Rosada. The regiment he created now guards the president, and it guards him.

   Even this tomb has two versions. The coffin lies at a tilt, in a side chapel rather than in the main body of the church. A popular story says the Church kept him out because he was a Freemason. The newspaper La Nacion calls that unfounded, and says the coffin simply did not fit the space. The nation's hero is buried inside an argument.

   For fifteen years the archbishop of this cathedral was Jorge Bergoglio, until his election as Pope Francis in two thousand and thirteen.

   If the doors are open, the tomb is a few minutes' detour. Then follow the edge of the square round to its west side, toward the long white building with the arcade and the small bell tower, and stop facing it.

4. 4. Cabildo: The Building the Revolution Cut Down

   The long white building with the arcade and the bell tower is the Cabildo, the old town council, and this is where the revolution was argued. On the twenty-second of May, eighteen ten, the council called an open meeting of the city's leading residents. About two hundred and…

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5. 5. La Prensa: The Goddess Taken Off the Roof

   Across the avenue is the palace a newspaper built for itself. La Prensa, the paper of the Paz family, moved into this building in eighteen ninety-eight. Look right up to the top. The bronze figure is Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom, with a torch in one hand and a sheet of…

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6. 6. Cafe Tortoni: The Back Door That Became the Front

   A few doors along is the Cafe Tortoni, and its best story is about which way it faces. The cafe was founded in eighteen fifty-eight by a Frenchman, and named after a famous cafe in Paris. By the time this avenue was planned, it stood on Rivadavia, the street that runs behind…

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7. 7. Avenida Nueve de Julio: Evita Over the Avenue

   This is the Avenida Nueve de Julio, named for the ninth of July, eighteen sixteen, the day of independence. It crosses your path from north to south, well over a hundred metres wide. Find the white Obelisk, far up the avenue, and turn so that it is behind you. Now look down the…

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8. 8. Palacio Barolo: A Tower Built on Dante

   Ahead of you, across the avenue, is the Palacio Barolo, and it was designed to be read like a poem. The architect, Mario Palanti, from Milan, built it for the businessman Luis Barolo, and it opened in nineteen twenty-three. Palanti organised it around Dante's Divine Comedy: hell…

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9. 9. Kilometro Cero: Where the Country Is Measured From

   This stone block is Kilometro Cero, kilometre zero, the point Argentina's national roads are measured from. It was made by the brothers Jose and Maximo Fioravanti and unveiled in October nineteen thirty-five in Plaza Lorea, the small fenced garden across the avenue from where…

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10. 10. National Congress: The Other End of the Axis

    In front of you, at the end of the gardens, is the National Congress. An Italian architect, Vittorio Meano, won the competition to design it in eighteen ninety-five. In June nineteen oh-four, with the building half built, he was shot dead at his home by a former employee who was…

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