In every city we travel to, we always look for a place with a birds eye view of the city. Well....The place to go in Buenos Aires is Palacio Barolo. It once was the tallest buildings in South America and is still today, one of the most beautiful on Avenida de Mayo. The building was designed by eccentric Italian architect Mario Palanti and primarily made of materials imported from Italy. The design of the building was based on Dante's Inferno. It's doors opened to the public in 1923. The entrance of the building is supposed to be Hell, with the patterned circles in the floor simulating fire. Intricate angry looking dragons line the entire lobby. A warning as you begin reading this post....there are LOTS of pictures!! They speak a thousand words right?? Better than me rambling...I'll let them speak for themselves. Well....for the most part : )
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| The entrance to Palacio Barolo and "Hell" |
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| Looking up at the ceiling from the lobby |
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| One of the many very angry dragons in the lobby |
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| The medallion in the floor designed to symbolize the fires of Hell |
We left the lobby and began our journey up "into the heavens". Keeping in true Dante fashion, floors 1-14 represent purgatory, where floors 15-22 were designed to represent heaven. After walking up the first 7 or 8 flights (breathing heavy up the winding staircases of purgatory) we realized those old looking elevators do actually work (more on those later) and hitched a ride. A nice gentleman in a suit on the way back to his office opened up the elevator door and invited us in to join him to floor 14. That was as high as this particular bank of elevators would go. We got off here are walked around some hallways - all painted white, until we found yet another spiral staircase that would take us higher. We traveled up the staircase through "heaven" on foot. The higher we went, the more narrow the stairwell became. At last, we reached the highest point, the rooftop lighthouse that is meant to represent God and Salvation.
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| A view of Buenos Aires from the lighthouse tower |
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| Another view from the tower |
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| My favorite view of all....Plaza Congreso |
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| Another view of Congreso |
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| It was very difficult to get a picture in such tight quarters, but we did it!! |
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| Upside down reflection of the city in the giant beacon lens |
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| I figured out a way to get myself the picture!! |
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| As we were looking around...this cardboard Batman cutout was found on top of the light! We got a good laugh out of this one! Batman lives in Buenos Aires!!! Who knew??? TO THE BAT MOBILE!!!!! |
After about 30 minutes or so taking in the spectacular views, we headed back down to earth. The picture below will give you an idea of just how narrow the hallways actually were. Not recommended for the claustrophobic......at all!!!
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A shot of the stairs we are about to walk down...8 floors of them until the elevator!
At the base of the light tower was a room that was pretty much a giant circle with the entrance to the staircase inside. Throughout this space there were a bunch of old things. Not quite sure why they were there, but I thought they were pretty cool. See or yourself.... |
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| Yes...a box of dirty lightbulbs.... I dunno....it looked pretty neat sitting there |
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| Not 100% sure what this was...... |
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| Or this one........ |
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It said "Barolo".....I had to take a picture!!
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| Stopped for a quick photo at a little window balcony on our way down |
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Ah!! Now on to the elevators...I said I would get to those later : )
Honestly...as I said before, I did not think these elevators actually worked. they looked like something from an old vampire horror film. There was a one person elevator (did NOT ride that) that went straight down through the center of the spiral staircase we were walking down. When we got back down to the 14th floor we boarded the larger set of double elevators that looked a little more "friendly". They did however remind me of the ones from the Tower of Terror ride in Walt Disney World. When i said that.....(out loud of course!!) the people in the elevator weren't to happy with me to say the least! Oh well! We were descending into Dante's "Hell" after all. Happy to report we made it to the bottom safe and sound and our visit to Palacio Barolo was...for lack of better words....
SIMPLY HEAVENLY
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| A look down the single rider elevator in the center of the spiral staircase |
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| A look down the double elevator shaft.....I told you it looked creepy! |
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| The 14th floor elevator entrance...Tower of Terror written all over it my friends! |
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| The view of the elevators in the hotel lobby |
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