Who Won the U.S. Presidential Debate?

Perhaps improbable for a bustling Latin American metropolis, one of the most well-known tourist attractions in the Argentinian capital of Buenos Aires is a graveyard.

The Recoleta Cemetery includes a maze of Art Nouveau and neo-Gothic marble mausoleums, the tomb of lionised former first lady Eva Peron – and a show-stealing colony of cats. For decades, tourist cameras strayed from the wrought-iron doors and sculpted Madonnas that decorate the graveyard’s sumptuous mausoleums and instead trailed the cats as they sauntered and sunbathed. The stray cats were the subject of a 2016 documentary. They were even recently brought up on the media tour of the latest Mad Max film, Furiosa, thanks to a nostalgic comment from the Argentina-raised movie star Anya Taylor-Joy.

The cemetery looms so large in visitors’ itineraries because of its architectural extravagance and its connection to the country’s elite. Nestled inside one of Buenos Aires’s poshest neighbourhoods, it’s the burial place of past presidents and assorted national heroes – a who’s who of Argentinian history, the necropolis edition. For as long as most locals can remember, the cats topped off the site’s grandeur with a touch of whimsy.

Sergio Capurso, a tour guide at the Recoleta Cemetery and the son of a former funeral services employee, said the place was “full of cats” in his first visits as a young child in the late 1970s. He has since seen scores of visitors fall for them during his tours.

One of those besotted tourists was Blake Kuhre, a visitor from the United States who would go on to create the Guardians of Recoleta documentary. Kuhre remembers that coming across “a top tourist attraction that was literally swarming with cats felt completely foreign. … You have this form of life that’s living in a place where everyone has gone to rest.”

• Read More