Necropolis, part 1
Today I'll be talking about the Cemetario de Recoleta, or as Aria and I know it, the Recoleta Necropolis.
This is one of the main arteries crisscrossing the cemetery; most of the tombs are done in this sort of classical western style, but there is a significant number which are just completely weird. I'll get into those later - the Egyptian-styled tombs look tremendously out of place in here.
The classical looking tombs quite often have statutary on them; these statues, like pretty much everything else in the Necropolis is pretty damaged by time and neglect. The black on this statue is some kind of water discolouration, we think; whatever it is, though, it makes a really creepy effect.
It's not just the elements that have eroded the statues - vandals have been at work throughout the whole walled sub-city. There's quite a few missing hands, heads, or other easily breakable extremities. And it doesn't stop at the statutary, either! Tombs have been broken into, glass smashed, graffiti is scattered through the area - normally in pretty out of the way places, but some was more prevalent than others - and there's tombs that are stuffed full of rubbish, used condoms, and gardening equipment.
Some vandals are, of course, worse than others. Some seem to have revelled in their destruction of the crypts and graves, others are just napping in the sunlight. The Necropolis is full of cats. Buenos Aires is such a dog-centric city - it's a huge status boost to own a dog in this mostly vertical city of apartments and flats, even though you really don't have room for one. So the city-dwelling Argentines hire dog-walkers to take their pets on walks for them - you quite often see packs of dogs being led around by a single disgruntled young person, volume on his iPod cranked as high as he can make it to drown out the barking. The side effect of this, though, is that the city's cats have taken refuge in the dog-free parks and cemeteries.
The ones here, though, are suspiciously well fed, and tend to sleep in amongst the shattered caskets and vandalised tombs. Probably best not to think about it too closely.
This is one of the main arteries crisscrossing the cemetery; most of the tombs are done in this sort of classical western style, but there is a significant number which are just completely weird. I'll get into those later - the Egyptian-styled tombs look tremendously out of place in here.
The classical looking tombs quite often have statutary on them; these statues, like pretty much everything else in the Necropolis is pretty damaged by time and neglect. The black on this statue is some kind of water discolouration, we think; whatever it is, though, it makes a really creepy effect.
It's not just the elements that have eroded the statues - vandals have been at work throughout the whole walled sub-city. There's quite a few missing hands, heads, or other easily breakable extremities. And it doesn't stop at the statutary, either! Tombs have been broken into, glass smashed, graffiti is scattered through the area - normally in pretty out of the way places, but some was more prevalent than others - and there's tombs that are stuffed full of rubbish, used condoms, and gardening equipment.
Some vandals are, of course, worse than others. Some seem to have revelled in their destruction of the crypts and graves, others are just napping in the sunlight. The Necropolis is full of cats. Buenos Aires is such a dog-centric city - it's a huge status boost to own a dog in this mostly vertical city of apartments and flats, even though you really don't have room for one. So the city-dwelling Argentines hire dog-walkers to take their pets on walks for them - you quite often see packs of dogs being led around by a single disgruntled young person, volume on his iPod cranked as high as he can make it to drown out the barking. The side effect of this, though, is that the city's cats have taken refuge in the dog-free parks and cemeteries.
The ones here, though, are suspiciously well fed, and tend to sleep in amongst the shattered caskets and vandalised tombs. Probably best not to think about it too closely.