It may seem strange to cite a cemetery as a ‘must see’ on your trip to Buenos Aires. Yet no other necropolis is quite like the Cementerio de La Recoleta, nor tells quite as much of a country’s history. The sprawling Cementerio de La Recoleta holds the ornately carved tombs, chapels and mausoleums of Argentina’s upper classes, from presidents to generals, influential writers, journalists and Eva Duarte de Perón, or ‘Evita.’ It wasn’t always this way. The cemetery started as a simple burial place for slaves and the proletariat, but as the Buenos Aires ruling classes moved northwards away from the Plata River, Recoleta became (and still is) one of the city’s most fashionable addresses, for both the living and the dead. Tombs in the labyrinth-like streets in the Cementerio de La Recoleta reflect the wealth of its surroundings, with grandiose vaults and temples, faux pyramids and beautifully carved statuary from the art nouveau period, when funerary art was at its peak. In 1881 an imposing Doric-columned entrance was added, providing a dramatic threshold to the cemetery. Today many people come to pay respects to the important figures that are laid to rest here. Unsurprisingly, the tomb of Eva ...