Galerías Pacífico

As Calle Florida developed into an elegant shopping district in the late 19th century, Francisco Seeber and Emilio Bunge were the main shareholders in the proposed Bon Marché Argentino, inspired by Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emmanuelle II. Unfortunately for Seeber and Bunge, their French investors backed out, but Seeber resurrected the project by 1894 as the Galería Florida.

One of the tallest and broadest buildings of its era, with a double basement and four upper stories, it covered an entire city block bounded by Florida, Avenida Córdoba, San Martín, and Viamonte. In 1908, though, the British-run rail company Ferrocarril de Buenos Aires al Pacífico acquired the sector fronting on Córdoba for its business offices; within two years, it controlled the rest of the building. It later passed into the hands of Ferrocarriles Argentinos, the state railroad enterprise created when Juan Perón nationalized the sector in 1948.

Meanwhile, in 1945, Argentine artists gave the cupola its most dramatic feature: some 450 square meters of murals including Lino Spilimbergo’s El Dominio de las Fuerzas Naturales (the Dominion of Natural Forces), Demetrio Urruchúa’s La Fraternidad (Brotherhood), Juan Carlos Castagnino’s La Vida Doméstica (Domestic Life), Manuel Colmeiro’s La Pareja Humana (The Human Couple), and Antonio Berni’s El Amor (Love). Linked to famous Mexican muralist Davíd Alfaro Siqueiros through Spilimbergo, all belonged to the socially conscious Nuevo Realismo (New Realism) movement; the murals have twice been restored, in 1968 under Berni’s direction and then again by an Argentine-Mexican group in 1991.

For most of the 1980s the Galerías languished until, in 1992, the murals became a highlight of a transformation into one of the capital’s most fashionable shopping centers—appropriately enough, its original purpose. Well worth a visit even for nonshoppers, the tastefully modernized Galerías offers guided tours Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m. from the central information desk at street level. On the basement level, it has a high-quality food court and the city’s best public toilets.