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All Argentina Buenos Aires Palacio Barolo

Palacio Barolo

A tower devoted to — and modeled after — the Divine Comedy.

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Added By
Adam H
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Central Rotunda   User submitted
Masonic “A” in Ascensor   User submitted
  User submitted
  Allison / Atlas Obscura User
  Allison / Atlas Obscura User
Main hall   Beatrice Murch/Wikimedia
  Beatrice Murch/Wikimedia
Inscription in the main hall   Gabor Basch/Flickr
Inscription in the main hall   Gabor Basch/Flickr
Statue in the main hall   Kaled Naya/Wikimedia
1934 photo of a zeppelin by the tower   Archivo General de la Nación/Wikimedia
View from the top   Jmpznz/Wikimedia
The flames of Hell, on ground floor   LaTortueNoire
Dizzy?   LaTortueNoire
Buenos Aires view   LaTortueNoire
The beasts of Purgatory, on 4th floor   LaTortueNoire
  LaTortueNoire
Dizzy?   LaTortueNoire
Buenos Aires view   LaTortueNoire
  LaTortueNoire
Exterior of the Palacio Barolo   juliebarker / Atlas Obscura User
View of the Congress building from the Palacio Barolo at night   juliebarker / Atlas Obscura User
Dante’s bust   ski queen / Atlas Obscura User
Elevator   ski queen / Atlas Obscura User
100 year recognition   ski queen / Atlas Obscura User
You can see a pic of Eva Perón on the building in the back.   dixonleslie5 / Atlas Obscura User
Can see the light at top. The door was jammed that came out to this patio area and I had to use a paper clip to pop the simple lock. I was the hero of the day. :) good times.   dixonleslie5 / Atlas Obscura User
The workers tried to call but he was a no show.   dixonleslie5 / Atlas Obscura User
The flames of Hell, on ground floor   LaTortueNoire
The beasts of Purgatory, on 4th floor   LaTortueNoire
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About

Located a minute's walk from Argentina's national legislature, at the end of Buenos Aires' Avenida de Mayo, the Palacio Barolo, once South America's tallest building, still towers above the neighboring structures.

Work began on the building in 1919 and was completed in 1923, but its attraction extends far beyond its former title, or even its place among Buenos Aires' scads of building-relics from its golden age as an emerging world capital. Conceived of by cotton magnate Luis Barolo and architect Mario Palanti as a secular temple, the Palacio Barolo serves as an allegory for the structure and content of Dante Allighieri's Divine Comedy.

Believing that Europe had begun drifting toward collapse, Barolo intended the Palacio Barolo to house Dante's ashes far away from a disintegrating European continent. His partnership with Italian architect Mario Palanti, also a Dante aficionado, resulted in the design of a structure that included the numbers most prevalent in the Divine Comedy: The building's 22 floors (Dante divided the Divine Comedy into 22 stanzas) sit upon a foundation whose measurements conform to the golden ratio. And, like Dante's work, the building invites visitors to progress through hell, purgatory, and heaven as they climb to the top.

The lobby, a central hall adorned with inscriptions of Latin verse and monster statues, radiates out from a central dome into nine vaulted archways, which represent the nine circles of hell as described by Dante in the Inferno. Throughout these first three floors are geometric figures representing alchemical symbols for fire, the colors of the Italian flag, and Masonic symbols on the walls, floors, and still-operating antiquated elevators.

The highest levels, representing heaven, begin at an observation deck with one of the few 360 degree views of the sprawling city of Buenos Aires. Climbing a few more floors to the building's highest point (100 meters, analogous to the 100 cantos of the Divine Comedy), one arrives at a still-working lighthouse.

Like the Pillars of Hercules at the mouth of the Mediterranean, Pilanti intended this tower light and another of his buildings, the Palacio Salvo in Montevideo, Uruguay, to serve as a welcome to visitors arriving from the Atlantic to the Rio de la Plata estuary. The ornament above the lighthouse, a figure of the Southern Cross constellation, aligns with the actual constellation on July 9th, Argentine Independence Day.

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Avenida de Mayo, between Santiago del Estero and San José

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Allison, LaTortueNoire, juliebarker, dixonleslie5...

  • Allison
  • LaTortueNoire
  • juliebarker
  • dixonleslie5
  • ski queen
  • breaingram
  • francineramos1106

Published

March 11, 2010

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Palacio Barolo
Avenida de Mayo 1370
Buenos Aires
Argentina
-34.609392, -58.385881
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