Il Cementerio de la Recoleta opened in 1822, and it was the city’s first public cemetery. With 4,691 mausoleums, it is the final resting place for Argentina’s most influential families including 20 former presidents, military commanders, Nobel prize winners, and famous authors.

You could easily spend half a day wandering around. It’s huge. The cemetery is laid out with a series of streets, alleys, and little plazas.

There is a big variety of design styles for the mausoleum buildings.

This mausoleum contains the grave of a Nobel prize winner in chemistry who died in 1971. He was very modest, but he came from a wealthy family. When this building was constructed in 1914, it cost 3 million dollars. It is estimated to be worth 15 million dollars today due to the precious stone and gold used in the design.

This family mausoleum had photos on the facade. We’ve visited cemeteries in Italy, and this is common there.

A lot of mausoleums had windows and you could see the caskets inside.

Not all graves are marked with mausoleums. Here are some others that we saw.

There were a lot of interesting details throughout the cemetery.

And the most famous gravesite of all is that of Eva Peron.

Maria Eva Duarte was born into poverty in rural Argentina in 1919. She married Juan Peron in 1945, and he became president of Argentina in 1946. During her short life, she was an actress, a politician, an activist, and a philanthropist. She was an advocate for women’s suffrage, workers’ rights across the country, and children’s education and well-being.

She died in 1952. She was a beloved figured, and on the day of her funeral procession, Argentina ran out of flowers. Evita lies in a heavily fortified crypt 5 meters underground to protect her remains.