Museo Evita

No figure in Argentine history arouses stronger feelings than Eva Perón, and the Museo Evita is the best place in Buenos Aires to understand why. The museum opened in 2002, on the fiftieth anniversary of her death, in a graceful early twentieth-century townhouse in Palermo that has its own connection to her story: in the late 1940s it became a temporary home run by the Eva Perón Foundation, sheltering women and children who had arrived in the capital with nowhere to go. The collection follows her extraordinary life in a series of rooms. It begins with her childhood in poverty in the small town of Los Toldos and Junín, moves to her years as a young actress in radio and film in Buenos Aires, and then to her meeting with Juan Domingo Perón and her rise to become the most powerful woman in the country. Here you will find the famous wardrobe, including the dresses and suits she wore on state occasions and on her 1947 European tour, along with hats, shoes and accessories, displayed alongside the plain clothes of her early life to show how carefully she shaped her image. Other rooms cover her political work: the foundation that built hospitals, schools and homes, her campaign for women's suffrage, achieved in 1947, and her role in the Peronist movement. The final rooms deal with her illness and death from cancer in 1952 at the age of thirty-three, the enormous public mourning, and the long and strange odyssey of her embalmed body before it was finally buried in the Duarte family vault in Recoleta Cemetery. Film clips and recordings of her speeches bring her voice into the house.

Visiting well: the museum is open from Tuesday to Sunday through the late morning and afternoon and closed on Mondays, with a modest admission fee; check the current hours before you go, as they can change on holidays. Allow an hour and a half to take it in properly, and longer if you watch the film and newsreel clips. Most labels are in Spanish, with English information available, and a guided visit or audio material adds a great deal, because the political context matters. The museum is respectful and admiring in tone, which is worth bearing in mind: Evita remains a divisive figure, and the museum presents her through the eyes of those who loved her rather than her critics.

The café: the museum's restaurant and café, with tables in the leafy patio and on the terrace of the old house, is one of the most pleasant in Palermo, and a good place to digest what you have seen over coffee, cake or a light lunch. It is popular, so arrive outside peak lunch hours if you want a patio table.

How to combine it: the museum is on Calle Lafinur, a quiet residential street a short walk from the Palermo parks, the Botanical Garden and the Plaza Italia area, and a short taxi ride from MALBA, so it fits naturally into a Palermo day. To follow Evita's story across the city, visit her tomb in Recoleta Cemetery and see the Casa Rosada balcony on the Plaza de Mayo where she addressed the crowds. Together they make one of the most compelling historical threads a visitor can follow in Buenos Aires, and the museum is where it makes sense.