Casa Rosada: The Balcony That Ruled Argentina

Stand here, facing the pink facade. No other country has its seat of government painted this way. There are two stories about the color. The first says that in the nineteenth century, white paint was mixed with cow fat and blood to waterproof the walls against Buenos Aires' damp cold. The second, more political and less proven, holds that President Domingo Faustino Sarmiento chose pink in 1873 to symbolize the union between the Unitarians, who used white, and the Federalists, who used deep red. Argentina had just come out of decades of civil wars between those two factions. Painting the govern…

Look up at the center of the facade. That balcony witnessed some of the most intense moments in Argentine history. From there, Eva Perón spoke dozens of times to the crowds that filled this square. On May 1, 1952, already gravely ill with cancer, she spoke in public for the last time from this balcony, held up by a rigid brace hidden under her clothes because she could barely stand. She died eighty-six days later, on July 26, 1952. She was thirty-three. Before her, other presidents used this same balcony to announce coups, declare war, or ask for popular support in moments of crisis. In 1996, …

Look at the arch in front of you. It connects two buildings that originally had nothing to do with each other. On one side stood the Government House. On the other, the Post Office Palace, finished in 1878. They were two separate buildings. In 1884, the government decided to merge them into a single function: the seat of the Executive Branch. Italian architect Francesco Tamburini was tasked with fusing them together, using this monumental arch as the hinge. Construction of the arch began in 1886. Tamburini died in 1890, before seeing it finished, but the work continued according to his plans. …

Look down toward the side of the building, on Paseo Colón avenue. There stands the Bicentennial Museum, opened in 2011 over an unusual discovery. Beneath the building, workers found the original foundations of the Fort of Buenos Aires and the brick walls of the old Taylor Customs House, built in 1855. The museum was built directly over these ruins, leaving them exposed so visitors can walk alongside them. It also houses a huge mural by Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros, painted in the 1930s and forgotten for decades before being restored. Just a hundred and fifty years ago, the shore of th…

On the other side of these walls is the Salón Blanco, the White Hall, the most important space in Argentine institutional life. There, ambassadors and foreign heads of state are received, decrees and treaties are signed, and presidents take their oath of office in a private ceremony before stepping out onto the balcony to greet the crowd. The hall has bronze and crystal chandeliers, mirrors, and marble floors, a decor that blends European styles inherited from the building's successive renovations since the late nineteenth century. A few meters away is the presidential office, the actual room …

Look at the soldiers standing at the entrance, on Balcarce street. They wear a blue and red uniform inspired by the original from 1812. They are grenadiers of the Mounted Grenadier Regiment General San Martín, founded by José de San Martín on March 16, 1812, to fight the war of independence. They crossed the Andes, fought in Chile and Peru. The regiment was disbanded after the liberating campaign, but in 1903 President Julio Argentino Roca recreated it under the same name and uniform, as a tribute to San Martín. Since 1909 they have served as the official presidential guard. Every morning, a g…

Look up at the roof of the building. There's a small helipad up there that almost no one notices. On December 20, 2001, that helipad became the stage for one of the most remembered images in recent Argentine history. The country was on fire: the economic crisis had left millions of people in poverty, banks had frozen people's savings, and the streets filled with protesters banging pots and pans. There was repression, and at least thirty-nine people died across the country in those two days. That afternoon, at 7:45 pm, President Fernando de la Rúa signed his resignation and, minutes later, left…