The Mayo Avenue

Belle du jour, the Avenue of May is the dream of being Paris made on marble and stone. One after other, magnificient buildings flows along the short blocks of the Avenue. When this Avenue was born, Buenos Aires was more peasant than Parisian, till the point that it wasn't called Avenue of May, but "The Avenue", because it was the only one. For me as a private tour guide for Buenos Aires, is a pleasure to share this cute Avenue, pride of my city.

For those Architecture lovers, this lines are limited for depict all the MasterWorks existing across the Avenue, but combining buildings, sculptures and facades we have a nice scaffolding to built an Arch Tour 

About Zarzuelas and punchs

The first portenean hotels where established along the Avenue most of them managed by members of the Spanish Community that were flowing again to Argentina looking -and getting- a better life. The restaurants and the coffees where the jewells at first floors of the Avenue, also under Spanish managers. Naturally a theater appeared -so Spanish of course- where the zarzuelas where tipycal. And as every classic, it was opened with brilliant visitors like Federico García Lorca, who lived six months here, in a hotel of the Avenue. Those theather named "La Zarzuela" (Spanish dance) was burned in a great fire, and when it was reopened named like Teatro Avenida, the first play was done by other Great: Plácido Domingo.

And in the coffees, during the Spanish Civil War, everything was burning here, the words, the punchs and one or two chairs flying across the avenue. The crashes between the Falangist of the café “El Español” and the republicans of the “Iberia” (in those times “La Toja”) where famous.

36 billiards cafe and almost 36 billiards with the same name. Today only one survives, I talking about the "36 billares", present since 1894, with a basement bountiful in stories and...billiard tables.

Other beauty of the Avenue is the "London City" coffee installed in the structure of the Old Gath & Chaves Malls.

But the distinguished jewell of this crown of coffees is without place to doubt, The Café Tortoni.

About Parades, Happyness and Sadness

Linking two of the powers of our Government system, the Avenue of May means the communication between the Legislative Power (The National Congress) and the Executive One (Government House or Pink house). This turn it in an civic-monumental axis, stage for parades by definition, because of celebrate and asumption of Power by the elected Presidents, as for the big mournings like the funeral procession during the funerals of Eva Perón and Juan Perón. But also across this Avenue passes the parades of "comparsas" and "candombes" during the hot Portenean Carnival, as the big heros like Jorge Newbery, great flying records maker, as in airplane as in hot-air balloons.

But the procession goes underground

Yes, this amazing Avenue is cute even in its entrails, crossed by the oldest subway line in Southamerica, cuwhich tunnels where done by the effort of thousands of Italian inmigrants, and its beauty original wagons, which perfectly worked during exactly one hundred years since 1913, when it was opened. Unluckily this year they wear replace by modern garbage that smells plastic lemon. You can see how were the old trains in this pictures bellow:

I invite you to discover all the secrets of this Avenue in an unforgettable tour

            
            
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