12 noon | Around Plaza de Mayo

Look out for clocks and towers. Two blocks to walk while looking skywards.

After crossing Avenida 9 de Julio, turn left down Suipacha and walk to the junction with the street called Mitre. There you'll find the church San Miguel de Arcángel (Mitre 886), which dates back to 1830 and was where Vaslav Nijinsky, one of the 20th century's best dancers and choreographers got married to Austro-Hungarian countess Rómula Pulsky.

The building has a facade of Corinthian columns and houses works by Italian painter Augusto Ferrari. From the church, we'll move to a former cabaret, in Galería Güemes (Florida 165), a true architectural gem. The view from the roof is one of the best in the city - Antoine Saint-Exúpery, author of the Little Prince chose to live here for that very reason. Always eccentric, Saint-Exúpery apparently kept a seal cub in his bath in the apartment. Many years later, Julio Cortázar wrote El otro cielo (the other sky), a story in which he imagined the Galería Güemes in París.

Take Calle Florida and turn in Diagonal Norte, which leads to Plaza de Mayo. At the intersection of Av. Rivadavia and Reconquista, you'll find the location of the national bank's vault, the third biggest vault in the world, surpassed only by those of Plaza San Pedro in Rome and the Capitolio in Washington.

Looking in the opposite direction from the square, you'll see the Siemens company's building (Bolívar and Diagonal Sur). A curious feature of this building is the rare automatic clock which uses an electromagnetic system. It was brought from Europe at the start of the 20th century and is one of very few clocks of this kind. 


 

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MITRE, BARTOLOME 886