La Recoleta Cemetery

La Recoleta Cemetery is a famous cemetery located in the Recoleta district of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The fashionable area around the cemetery is home to some of the city's wealthiest citizens, who frown on the "wrong" people being buried there next to some of the country's most influential people including presidents and political leaders.

Entrance to the cemetery is through neo-classical gates with tall Greek columns. The cemetery contains many elaborate marble mausoleums, decorated with statues, in a wide variety of architectural styles. The entire cemetery is laid out in sections like city blocks, with wide tree-lined main walkways branching into sidewalks filled with mausoleums.

Each mausoleum bears the family name etched into the façade; brass or bronze plaques are added to the front for particular family members. La Recoleta is one of those cemeteries where the tradition of engraving a death date but no birth date has been maintained.

Some of the famous interred in La Recoleta Cemetery are:

• Eva Perón, née María Eva Duarte (1919-1952);
• Juan Domingo Perón, (1895-1974), President of Argentina;
• Juan Manuel Fangio (1911-1995), race car driver;
• Susan Barrantes, (1937-1998), mother of Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York.

See also: List of other famous cemeteries