The Downtown area ravolves around Florida, the main pedestrian street in town, from Rivadavia avenue to Plaza San Martín: ten blocks sorrounded by sites of great historical and architectural interest.

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It extends over a mere 12 blocks, but here the City's financial life buzzes for most of the day, winding down only as streets run nearer to Retiro an soothing San Martín Square. Everithing here is colored by money: the headquarters of large banks, cash carying trucks, motorcyclist making deliveries (know as motoqueros) and the hurried passers-by in formal attire.

One of the oldes churches in Buenos Aires preserves its history al Reconquista 207: its is the BASILICA DE LA MERCED, founded in 1733. Its carillon, praised by Enrique Santos Discépolo and Alfredo Lepera in a tango, was the first in Buenos Aires, and its 19 bells could play complex tunes. Inside, with light streaming down large stained-glass windows, its maintains a colonial, barroque style, highlighted by its valuable altarpieces.

Next to it, the CONVENT OF ST. RAYMOND NONNATUS open its doors to strange blend of peacefulness and wordly consumption: its cloister leads to a placid garden with tall palms trees, but on the side galeries there is a restaurant, some antique stores, a photo storewith a nice range of collector's cameras, and even a men's and woman's underwear store. Of course, at the same time there still are posted signs asking for donations for Mercedario friars, the religious order owning the convent, to go ahead with their missionary work in China. At SArmiento 362, The Banco Provincia Building i home to the DR. ARTURO JAURETCHE HISTORICAL ARCHIVE AND MUSEUM. Its halls display the first Argentine currency note press and a numismatic collection ranging from the times Spanish rule up to currency notes issued by governor Luis Vernet on Islas Malvinas. It also retells the story of downtown Buenos Aires by means of two scale models showing the changes ocurred in hardly over a century.

At San Martín 336, the MITRE MUSEUM lets us in the house of this Argentine writer, military man and politician, the presidento of Argentina from 1962 and 1868, and founder of La Nación, one of the main natinal newspapers. The museum preserves books, newspapers, manuscripts, and maps that belonged to Mitre, as well as the Biblioteca Americana collection, with a biblography of the 16th century. The building itself is a house from the late 18th century, very well mainteined.

Now let us go back Florida. The street recived this name in 1922, to commemorate the battle of La Florida, fought in Bolivia in 1814 during the independence wars. Unfortunatley, the most famous pedestrian street in Argentina is crowded block after block by a swarm of musicians, dancers and preformers of all sorts.

However, it still has some treasures: GALERIA GUEMES is one of them. It is a broad passageway connecting Florida and San Martínstreets, which preserves the style after which it was built in 1915, within the earliest skyscraper in Buenos Aires.convent Its stores are as attractive as the central kiosks, with changing shapes but still preserving the original marble fixtures, molding and stairways. Its basement holds a renewed, interesting high-class tango store.

GALERIAS PACIFICO, at Florida 700-800, are something mora than just a well-kept, well-supplied shopping mall: they are a building that had originaly been conceived as an Argentine sister of the Bon Marché French Store, in the late 19th century. Some years afterwards, part of that building was sold to the Buenos Aires al Pacífico Railway, which gave it its current name an installed its administrative office there.

In 1955, the office section was isolated from the commercial gallery, whose central vault was decorated with murals, painted by the most importants artists of the times: Antonio Berni, Demetrio Urruchua, Lio Enea Spilimbergo, Manuel Colmeiro and Juan Carlos Castagnio. Them came a long period of decay, after which it was declared a National Historical Monument in 1989 and later recycled to become the current Galerías, opened in 1922. The same block also host the BORGES CULTURAL CENTER, a spaceofftering art exhibitions, music, theater and other activities such as workhops and seminars.

Opposite the cultural center,on San Martín street, lies the MONASTERIO DE SANTA CATALINA DE SIENA, with its imposing church and cloister. Founded by five nuns from Córdoba, it was the first monastery in town.

At Florida 800, the gigant building of Harrods departament store is still closed, waiting to recover its splendor of old, whereas one blok farther down the street takes us to the lush tree lines of PLAZA SAN MARTIN. Dedicated to the Argentine millitary man and politician, considered the Father of the Country by his fellow countrymen, the squere has a statue of the heo on horseback, made in French artist Daumas and installed in 1862. The square is circled by splendid palaces that once belonged to prominent local families and now harbor national institucions: the former Palacio Anchorena, nowadays PALACIO SAN MARTIN and the palacio Paz the seats of the ministery of Foreign Affairs and Worship and the CIRCULO MILITAR respectively.

Across the Square, the KAVANAGH BUILDING still display its amazing shape, which in 1936 turned it into the tallest building in Latin America. Back then, it was also the tallest in the world to have a reinforced concrete structure. Along the side of the Square facing Av. del Libertador a CENOTAPH, forever remembers the soldiers who surrendered theirs lives in the Malvinas War in 1982.

MONUMENTAL TOWER, the tower has a panoramic point, which can be accessed by a glass elevator. Retiro Train Station, constructed in 1915 an at that time the largest in South America, after a French style and with Britsh construction materials.

Fuente: Revista LUGARES (The Best of Buenos Aires).

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