Looking for Loot

Every good historic tales starts out “Legend has it...” But in the case of barrio San Telmo “History has it ...”. Dating back to the late 18th and early 19th century San Telmo was once the preferred stomping grounds of the wealthy European immigrants arriving to Buenos Aires. Later on in the 19th century, yellow fever swept through the calles and casas of San Telmo, and those with the plata abandoned their mansiones for the more saludable campo ringing the outskirts of the city. Most abandoned their mansions intact, believing their possessions were inhabited by the fever, and started over afresh. Soon after, the less affluent immigrants with nowhere to go moved into the un-claimed mansions or simply started storing away the fine china to be sold.

Hoy en día San Telmo is one of my favorite barrios in Buenos Aires, every one of its streets is a different treasure hunt, a portal into the past. Filled with fanciful facades off the street of Paris, the bottoms stories have been ransacked, gutted, and turned into antique stores. If you adore old junk as I do, sifting through a different era is more satisfying than going to a museum to see by-gone relics housed in glass cages. I like to pretend I can actually afford the things I admire, and can spend hours touching tiny details on inventions I never knew existed, turning over shelves, and drooling over old books, postcards, and stamps from a time when the world seemed bottomless. At the end of the day I’m always walking away with a little piece of history in my pocket and rose tinted ideas of a once and more worldly romance now settled to dust.