PORTEÑO MYTHS AND LEGENDS, PART 1 (By Hostel Buenos Aires)

There a physical city, a concrete and tangible one, a city buit on histories and anecdotes more or less logical. But there’s another city: the mythical Buenos Aires. There are several myths surrounding our city. Some of them are as old as the very foundation of Buenos Aires. Hostel Colonial tells you some of those stories which cause fear, curiosity or hope to the Porteños, inhabitants of our city.

The Hole of Souls: is probably the first Porteño myth. In 1536, when the first foundation took place, a Spanish soldier naed Osorio was setenced to death “until his soul breaks out from his body”. In the place of execution, northeast angle of the Plaza de Mayo born the so called “Hole of Souls”, the first place which terrify Porteños.

Ghosts in Retiro: a luxurious house located in Retiro neighborhood and called the Noel Palace (current Fernández Blanco Museum) is right next to the house where two famous Argentine avantgarde poets lived. Norah Lange and Oliverio Girondo was fond of the ghosts which surrounded the house and dreamed to become part of those spectrums one day. Some say they actually made it.

The haunted temple: in the southern neighborhood of Barracas lives one of the most famous ghosts of our city: Felicitas Guerrero, the most beautiful woman of its time. Member of the aristocracy, she was shot dead by one of her pretenders, by the end of the XIXth Century. The legend says that in the Santa Felicitas Chapel even now the bells toll by theirselves and the angels which decorate it lost repeatedly their left wings.