Obelisco de Buenos Aires
Built by 157 workers in 31 days — and the city voted to demolish it just three years later.
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Architect Alberto Prebisch poured 680 cubic metres of reinforced concrete in 2-metre sections to hit the 1936 quadricentennial deadline. A 1939 city-council demolition order was promptly vetoed, preserving it. The exterior is clad not in local stone but in Olaen white stone shipped from Córdoba, giving the shaft a pale finish distinct from the structure underneath.
What to look for
- The single entrance on the west face — the other three sides are blank
- Olaen white stone cladding from Córdoba covering the reinforced-concrete core
- Four small windows near the 67.5-metre tip, accessible only by 206 interior steps
Located in Plaza de la República at the intersection of Avenidas 9 de Julio and Corrientes — street-level access to the plaza is open.
Obelisco de Buenos Aires is one of 34 sights worth the detour in Buenos Aires, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Buenos Aires pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Buenos Aires
- Mas Monumental Stadium85,018 seats on reclaimed Río de la Plata marshland — the largest stadium in South America, and the ground where a World Cup Final was played.
- La BomboneraThat chocolate-box shape doesn't just look strange — the unusual design gives the bowl its famously excellent acoustics.
- Casa RosadaThe baby-pink paint was a political recipe: mix the Federalists' red with the Unitarians' white, and maybe stop a civil war.
- Teatro ColónAcoustics expert Leo Beranek surveyed leading international opera and orchestra directors and ranked this hall the world's best room for opera — not a slogan, a measured result.
- Oscar and Juan Gálvez Race TrackF1 cars once screamed through the third corner here at 305 km/h, flat out for 40 straight seconds — and the grandstands put you right on top of it.
- Palacio BaroloA 1923 tower mapped floor by floor onto Dante's Divine Comedy — hell at the base, purgatory in the middle, heaven at the top.