Palacio Barolo

A hundred metres of Dante on Avenida de Mayo, with a working lighthouse on the roof.

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🏛️ Palacio Barolo Essentials

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Best Time: Morning

Clear light down the avenue from the top

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Allow 1 to 2 Hours

The guided climb is the whole point

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Book the Tour

The upper floors and beacon are guided access only

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Subte: Line A, Saenz Pena

Avenida de Mayo 1370, a short walk

🧭 Why Visit

We booked the tour on a whim and it turned out to be the best hour we spent in Buenos Aires. From the street it is simply a very tall, very strange building on an avenue of ordinary ones. Inside it is a poem, laid out floor by floor, and the guide walks you up through it. Climb it early in the day and you get the whole city with the light still on it.

🏛️ A Little History

The Italian architect Mario Palanti finished it in 1923 for the textile magnate Luis Barolo, and built the Divine Comedy into it deliberately. A hundred metres tall, one metre for each canto. Hell in the basement and at street level, Purgatory through the middle floors, Heaven at the top under the beacon. It was the tallest building in South America until the Kavanagh Building took the title in 1935, and Palanti built its twin, Palacio Salvo, across the river in Montevideo.

💡 Did You Know?

The lighthouse at the summit is a real one, and the plan was for its beam to reach Palacio Salvo on the Uruguayan shore so the two towers would stand as a pair of markers at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. Look through the lens from the right angle and the dome of the Congreso appears inside the glass.

From Avenida de Mayo

The Street

The tower announces itself from a block away, then hides its best work behind a bronze door.

Palacio Barolo seen from its own doorway, the tower rising the full height of the frame.
A Hundred Metres, One Per CantoPalacio Barolo stands a hundred metres tall on an avenue of six-storey blocks, one metre for each canto of the Divine Comedy, and it held the record for the tallest building in South America until 1935.
An ornate carved stone portal with gilded bronze doors at Palacio Barolo.
The Bronze PortalThe entrance is a carved stone frame around gilded bronze doors, and it is the first sign that the building is not merely tall.
A carved winged griffin console supporting a lamp on a Buenos Aires facade.
A Griffin on the CornerWinged creatures hold up the lamps along the facade. There are dozens of them and no two seem quite alike.
Hell, at street level

The Lobby

Dante's Inferno occupies the basement and the ground floor, and the ornament makes no attempt to be subtle about it.

The vaulted entrance hall of Palacio Barolo with a chandelier and an Argentine flag.
The Vaulted HallThrough the doors the ceiling lifts into a vault hung with a single chandelier, and an Argentine flag hangs the length of it.
A bronze creature corbel carrying a lamp beneath a stone cornice in the Barolo lobby.
The Bronzes Under the CorniceBronze creatures sit where the piers meet the cornice, each carrying a lamp. Palanti put his beasts where the building could hold them.
A wrought-iron lift cage with a brass ASCENSOR plate at Palacio Barolo.
AscensorThe lift is a wrought-iron cage with its name in brass across the front, and it still runs.
A brass semicircular floor indicator dial with a pointer above a lift.
The Floor DialAbove the cage a brass semicircle counts the floors, with a single pointer to say where the lift has got to.
Purgatory, floors one to fourteen

The Climb

A wrought-iron lift, a light well running the height of the building, and a stair that keeps going after the lift stops.

Looking up a tall interior light well at Palacio Barolo toward the dome.
The Light WellA shaft runs up through the middle of the building and everything above the lobby borrows its daylight from it.
An ornamental spiral staircase with wrought-iron balustrades lit by side windows.
The StairIron balustrades wind up beside the shaft, catching the light from the windows on each landing.
A tight spiral service staircase with yellow-painted step edges seen from above.
The Last FlightThe lift does not reach the top. The final climb to the beacon is a tight painted spiral with yellow nosings on every tread.
A period office desk with a black telephone, typewriter and blotter in window light.
An Office Left As It WasOne floor is kept as a period office: a black telephone, a typewriter, a blotter, and window light doing the rest.
Heaven, and the lighthouse

The Summit

A working beacon at 100 metres, and the reason to climb: Avenida de Mayo running dead straight to Plaza de Mayo one way and the Congreso the other.

The great glass lens and mechanism of the lighthouse beacon at Palacio Barolo.
The BeaconAt the top is a real lighthouse lens. Palanti meant its beam to answer Palacio Salvo across the river in Montevideo.
The dome of the Argentine Congress refracted through the glass of the Barolo beacon.
Through the GlassStand to one side and the dome of the Congreso appears through the lens, bent and doubled by it.
Avenida de Mayo running straight toward Plaza de Mayo seen from the top of Palacio Barolo.
East to Plaza de MayoAvenida de Mayo runs dead straight from the foot of the tower to the Casa Rosada, and from up here you can see the whole of it at once.
The Barolo cupola in the foreground with the Palacio del Congreso beyond.
West to the CongresoTurn around and the tower's own cupola sits in the foreground with the Palacio del Congreso closing the avenue behind it.
The green-tiled upper facade and white turrets of Palacio Barolo from its terrace.
The CrownFrom the terrace the top of the building reads as green tile and white turrets, which is not what it looks like from the street at all.

Live Prices & Availability

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Getting There & Around

  • Line A of the Subte is the oldest underground in South America and runs the length of Avenida de Mayo
  • The building sits between Congreso and Plaza de Mayo, so it pairs naturally with either

Local Know-How

  • Go up before the middle of the day; the avenue runs east and the light is behind you later
  • The lobby is worth ten minutes on its own, and you can see it without a ticket

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I go up without a tour?
The lobby is open, but the lift, the upper floors and the lighthouse are guided access. Book ahead rather than turning up and hoping.
Is it really built around the Divine Comedy?
Yes, and not subtly. A hundred metres for a hundred cantos, Hell at the bottom, Purgatory in the middle, Heaven at the top, with the beacon standing in for the nine choirs of angels. Palanti was an admirer and had the room to prove it.
How does it compare with the view from other towers?
It is lower than a modern observation deck and better for it. You are close enough to read the avenue below, and Avenida de Mayo runs dead straight from the door to Plaza de Mayo.
What is the building across the river?
Palacio Salvo in Montevideo, by the same architect and finished five years later. The two were conceived as a pair, one on each side of the Rio de la Plata.

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