Torre Monumental
A clock tower built by Buenos Aires's British community as a gift to Argentina — then renamed by Argentina after the two countries went to war.
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The British residents of Buenos Aires commissioned this tower to mark Argentina's 1810 independence centennial, shipping white Portland stone and bricks from Stonehouse, Gloucestershire across the Atlantic. English architect Sir Ambrose Macdonald Poynter designed it; English crews built it. Delays piled up — a king died, a gas company stalled work, WWI intervened — and it finally opened in 1916. After the 1982 Falklands War, Argentina stripped its original name. The square it stands on was renamed too.
What to look for
- White Portland stone facade — every block shipped from England
- Bricks from Stonehouse, Gloucestershire embedded in the structure
- The plaza name: Fuerza Aérea Argentina, the post-Falklands replacement for Plaza Británica
Corner of Avenida San Martín and Avenida del Libertador in Retiro.
Torre Monumental 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.