Country: Argentine
City: Buenos Aires
Café Tortoni: Magic and History of Buenos Aires

By: Mónica Molina
Whoever has walked through the streets of Buenos Aires can surely note how these peculiar shops, called cafes, draw the idiosyncrasy of certain sectors, and synthesize the presence of Europe in the spirit of Latin America. The Tortoni Café is the oldest in Argentina and constitutes the paradigm of the Buenos Aires café. Early last century, the café was frequently visited by important artists and Argentinean and European intellectuals; it is the memory of a time of extraordinary economical, social, and cultural progress that placed Argentina at the top of the continent and made her into a powerful attraction for European immigration to Latin America, and the great Buenos Aires metropolis became one of the most prosperous and refined world capitals.

Among its wooden walls, next to its oak and green marble table, sat Alfondina Storni, Carlos Gardel, Luigi Pirandello, Federico García Lorca, Jose Ortega, Gasset, and other famous people; writers or parliamentarians who transferred a part of their personalities to this traditional café, which is already an inseparable part of the history of Buenos Aires, and one of the few historical places that have saved its current progress.

Its origins go back to 1858, when a French immigrant, named Tuan, decided to inaugurate it and gave it the same name as a store on Boulevard des Italiens, where the elite of the Parisian culture of the 19th century would gather. Late that century, the bar was bought by another Frenchmen: Celestino Curutchet.
A group of painters, writers, journalists, and musicians would visit the café, and form the "Agrupación de Gente de Artes y Letras" (Group of People of Arts and Letters), with the famous Argentinean painter, Benito Quinquela Martin, as their leader. In May of 1926 they formed "La Peña" and asked don Celestino to let them use the underground tavern; he happily accepted because, in his own words, "the artists dont spend much money, but they give the café shine and fame".

In 1997, the first lady, Hillary Clinton, visited the place; two years before that, Juan Carlos de Borbón, king of Spain, visited the café and wrote: "To Café Tortoni, which has known how to keep the taste of the past. Keep the memory of so much history and Argentinean culture, and marc the closeness of your society and our Spain".

Café Toronti resists death. Its gentile spirit still lasts; to those who visit it, it offers coffee, history, and the old tavern where an intense and varied list of spectacles take place. As the writer Eduardo Guibourg says in his book about Café Tortoni: "Legends tell of Celtic spirits leaving their tombs once a year to help trap the flock of sheep. I sometimes seem to live a similar circumstance when, stretched in front of a table of Café Tortoni, I feel the dear ghosts of Buenos Aires share my chocolate cup".
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