Antique

Everything at the brand new Cultural Center in downtown Buenos Aires is free — from art installations to symphony concerts. "Culture is an investment for this government, not an expense," says Culture Minister Teresa Parodi.

A new tourist attraction in Argentina — The Centro Cultural Kirchner in downtown Buenos Aires — has been posting some impressive numbers since it opened in mid-May. As many as 10,000 patrons a day are trooping through an ornate, turn-of-the-last-century building that has been converted into what's said to be the fourth-largest cultural center in the world. Remarkably, everything in it is free, from video installations to comedy acts to symphony concerts.



Looking up from below at La Ballena Azul (the "Blue Whale") while its bluish metal "skin" was still under construction. The concert hall is three stories high and actually "floats" — it is mounted on shock-absorbing stilts to protect it from vibrations from the subway nearby.

They call the main concert hall La Ballena Azul, "The Blue Whale," and it swims inside a grand Beaux Arts palace where, for most of the last century, folks in Buenos Aires mailed letters: the former Central Post Office. The Blue Whale auditorium — blimp-shaped, three stories high, holding 1,750 people — floats in what used to be the package-sorting area.

Why "floats"? Because the subway runs nearby, says guide Federico Baggio. "So the vibrations would not enter the symphony hall. It ended up having a whale shape, so that's why they named it like that, but the purpose is acoustics."



A chandelier-like structure made of frosted glass sits above the Blue Whale. It is large enough to house exhibits.

The Blue Whale is the most eye-catching attraction in the new Kirchner Cultural Center, but even it can't upstage its surroundings. The Palacio de Correos, literally the "Postal Palace" — commissioned in 1889 and completed almost 30 years later — was the largest public building in Argentina when it opened in 1928. It's eight stories tall, occupies a full city block behind a French Second Empire facade, and contains almost 1 million square feet of marble hallways, stained-glass ceilings and windows. You can also find traces of original post office fixtures, such as mailboxes and grand marble counters where you could finish and address your letters.

When the new architects changed things, to add, say, elevators, or a boxy, chandelier-like structure above the Blue Whale that's big enough to mount exhibits in, they purposely used different materials: frosted glass, stainless steel. That way you never lose sight of the the ornate beauty of the original building — beauty that enticed President Juan Peron to move his presidential offices here in the 1940s from the nearby Casa Rosada.



First lady Eva Peron's desk now sits in a spectacular vaulted room. Once the office of the postal service director, it was later the headquarters for the Eva Peron Foundation.

And the grandest room — a spectacular vaulted space the size of a banquet hall that had been the office of the postal service director — became the headquarters for the Eva Peron Foundation, which dispensed charity and gifts to impoverished Argentine citizens. That space has been restored as a sort of museum exhibit, with everything from Eva Peron's desk to bottles of champagne, letters piled all the way to the 20-foot ceiling in one corner, dozens of toys, go-carts, and other gifts of the sort she dispensed.

Approaching the desk, you hear recordings of actors' voices re-creating what went on there — children excited over Christmas toys, or asking first lady "Evita" for something for their grandparents. It's a scene some older visitors can remember from real life, and occasionally prompts tears.

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