2022
Hi Local Guides from all around the world. It's good to make another post and share it with you 🙂
This time I would like to tell you about my visit to El Zanjon with @santiagoirale, where we could walk through mysterious tunnels under the neighborhood of San Telmo in Buenos Aires City.
When you enter the place it just looks like an old house (a "chorizo"=sausage house, because it's long and it has many rooms together).
The house belonged to a very rich family. Later on they had to sell it because of an epidemic of yellow fever, caused by pollution in the water. They moved to Recoleta neighborhood and their house became a "Conventillo". Conventillos were places where immigrants used to live as they were a cheap option. There were people from very different nationalities, which meant different traditions. Sometimes families from 7 people or more lived in the same room. And all the place only had two toilets and one kitchen!
Many years later the conventillo was practically destroyed. Take a look at the walls:
A european man bought the place with the idea of building a restaurant but as he was digging holes to make all the installations he found an underground river and houses around it. So that's how EL ZANJÓN became a thing.
Take a look at this 360 picture I took there! That's what you see when you go downstairs 🙂
The place is really amazing, as it means that there were people living underground and around a river. Unfortunately taking pictures in the river part was not allowed, but the smell of humidity was amazing, taking into account that we were standing 10 cm over the "napas" (underground water). I could take pictures of some archeological rests that belonged to the families who lived there:
Now, as everything has been refurbished to be a museum, there are some pictures and old paintings of the time, showing how everything was. Here's another picture:
I hope you've enjoyed this post as much as I've enjoyed my visit to El Zanjón. If you ever visit Buenos Aires, I would recommend you to go there! The visit lasts about an hour and it's worth it 🙂
After that we had lunch at Mc Donald's and went to the Costanera Ecological Reserve in Puerto Madero neighborhood. Check my recap here!
