One of the most elegant, stylish and exclusive neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires is the barrio of La Recoleta. When it was formed back in the first part of the XVII century, it was called Montes Grandes, (Big woodlands) and it was a hide out for brigands, which turned it into an undesirable place for the well dressed.

In the year 1716, a small Franciscan chapel and a simple convent was installed in the area. Fourteen years later, a fully grown convent was built and also the church, Iglesia del Pilar, of vital importance for the later improvement of the area.

Recoleta is a Place of retreat and meditation.. The Franciscan and Dominican orders used to own, apart from a convent in the centre of the city, another one outside the city, to give their time to prayer and contemplation. This last one was called a "Recoleta", and its monks were known as "recoletos" or retired from the world.

Around 1770, the layout of the rural properties north of the present Plaza San Martin was incorporated into the plan of down town Buenos Aires. It used to be an area of small landholdings, connected by a winding road called Calle Larga (Long Street, now Quintana Av). The river then reached to the border of the current old bank, and covered the area where today stands the Museum of Fine Arts.

Legend has it that behind the church of the Recoleta, towards Avenida Pueyrredn, one saw the stockyards, slaughterhouses and the wagon trail that went north.

This attracted a miscellaneous group of people: river shore dwellers, farm labourers and troublemakers that lived in the grocery stores of the area. It repeated that the tango was born in this ambience, amongst boarding houses of ill repute and coffee shops. It was danced in the Armenonville de Libertador y Tagle in 1888, and afterwards in the Palais de Glace.

The urban renewal of the Recoleta started in 1830, with the laying out of the Avenida Callao as an encircling road around the city's centre. It came all the way to Quintana and, in the first days; it was called Calle de las Tunas.

The cholera and yellow fever epidemics, in 1871, the richest families leave the southern party of the city and move into the northern part. They not only started to move there but defined the style of the barrio through the building of palaces and elegant country houses surrounded by huge, attractive and colourful gardens.

The definite consolidation of the barrio was the work of the Superintendent Torcuato de Alvear, who, in 1885, laid out the Avenida that bears his name, a main street that was soon filled up by sumptuous palaces.

With the excavation material from Puerto Madero used as a landfill, the lower part was turned into plazas and parks that soon turned the Recoleta into the most elegant neighbourhood of the city.
Because of this, there are those self-called aristocrats that are of the opinion that la Recoleta is a piece of Paris, uprooted and transferred here, since they are very rich and La Recoleta is so French looking: big green areas, exclusive avenues with first class bars and restaurants.

La Recoleta offers big spaces for cultural activities to take place. During the weekends, in the heart of the barrio, at the corner of Junn Street and Quintana Avenue there is a huge artisans market. And any day of the week you can taste a typical Argentinean mate or a delicious and refreshing cup of tea in the winter gardens of the LoiSuites Recoleta, at Vicente Lpez Street 1955.

It is one of the great nightlife areas of Buenos Aires. The diversity of restaurants, pubs and nightclubs are concentrated along the streets that encircle the Cemetery i.e. Junn, Azcunaga and Vicente Lpez, a detail that lends the area another of its magical characteristics.