Cementerio de la Chacarita

Chacarita is Buenos Aires' largest cemetery and Recoleta's working-class counterpart — a massive necropolis that houses the remains of Carlos Gardel (the greatest tango singer in history), Juan Domingo Perón (the populist president who shaped modern Argentina), and the everyday porteños whose tombs tell the story of the city's immigrant communities in a way that Recoleta's elite vaults cannot.

Gardel's tomb is the most visited — a bronze statue of the singer in his trademark fedora, with a permanent cigarette placed between his fingers by fans and a collection of flowers, notes, and tango memorabilia that is refreshed constantly. Gardel died in a plane crash in Medellín in 1935, and his funeral in Buenos Aires drew hundreds of thousands of mourners in one of the largest public displays of grief in Argentine history. The tomb has become a secular shrine, and the tradition of placing a lit cigarette in the statue's hand continues despite cemetery regulations.

Perón's mausoleum, added to the cemetery after his remains were moved here in 2006, is a more controversial site — Peronism still divides Argentine opinion, and the tomb draws both devoted followers and people who come to argue about his legacy. The cemetery's scale (95 hectares, making it one of the largest in the world) means most visitors see only the notable tombs near the entrance, but walking deeper into the grounds reveals sections dedicated to specific immigrant communities — Italian, Spanish, Jewish, Armenian — whose tombstone inscriptions, in their original languages, document the waves of immigration that built the city.