The Metropolitan Cathedral or Cathedral of the city of Buenos Aires, began at the same time when Juan de Garay founded the city. The Metropolitan Cathedral was built six times in the same place. When the neighborhoods began with their geography and denomination around the parishes, Cathedral was the first.
"I make and found in the place a city to inhabit with the soldiers and people that I have brought for this purpose, the church which I place for invocation of the Most Holy Trinity, which is and must be a major parochial church", He left said in writing, Garay in 1580.
The church of adobe and wood was built and with that precariousness, in 1605 they had to move it to the Church of San Francisco. Hernandarias ordered it to be demolished, always in the same place where it is currently, on the northwest side of the Plaza de Mayo. In 1618 it collapsed and new wood was send from Paraguay. Six times the Cathedral collapsed or had to be demolish. It was finally declared a National Historic Monument, in May 1942. Located on the corner of Rivadavia and San Martín, the Cathedral now belongs to the district of San Nicolás and is considered one of the most important architectural works of the colonial era.
One of the things that surprises those who visit the Cathedral is the diversity of styles that can be observed inside. Do not forget that the construction of the current building was started in the eighteenth century and could only be completed at the beginning of the twentieth century, through the hands of various architects and builders, who, according to the moment, were changing or adding something, from elements somewhat baroque, to its essentially Romanesque style. The temple impresses with its volume and grandeur: its central nave is about one hundred meters long; its floor of tiny mosaics and special beauty has an area that approaches three thousand square meters.
It is one of the few cathedrals in Argentina that has a narthex which consists of an entrance porch, closed, with what we could call "double porch", as if it were a large hall, attached to the naves of the temple. It is seen separated before entering the naves by two doors that coincide in position, style and volume with the doors in the front that communicate with the outside. In the first centuries of the Church the narthex was reserved for the catechumens, who followed from there the ceremonies and preaching, but at the beginning of the Offertory of the Holy Mass, they retired, because they were not authorized to remain during the Eucharistic liturgy.
Finally, against many people thinking, the cathedral has not three naves, but five. The main one is covered with 41 meters in height dome. From the right side nave you can access the mausoleum that holds the remains of General San Martín, located in its fourth square, which has been there since 1880, and which was the work of the French sculptor Carrier Belleuse (inspired by French eclecticism, which prevailed in Europe at that moment). Inside, the dome, the presbytery, the arms of the transept and the central nave were decorated by the Italian Francesco Paolo Parisi with Renaissance frescoes, but they were lost because of the humidity. In the San Martín de Tours chapel is the monument to Archbishop León Federico Aneiros, a work by the sculptor Victor de Pol, which is a mausoleum in Carrara marble and stone, with the figure of the prelate kneeling in his center. The fourteen paintings of the Via Crucis are the work of Francesco Domenighini, another Italian, and originally were in the Church of Pilar. The floor was designed in 1907, by the Italian Carlo Morra, and made in England in Venetian mosaic. On August 17, 1947, a votive lamp with a legend that says "Here rest the remains of the Captain General, Don José de San Martín and the unknown soldier of the Independence, was discovered on the right front.
The main altar (golden and of great proportions) prevails in the middle like the most outstanding point of the center, and its sinuous forms and spirals, next to its ornamentation of flowers and rocalia (stone), betray its Churrigueresque style. On the left arm there is an altar with an image called "Santo Cristo de Buenos Aires" (a wooden sculpture of polychrome carob that represents the crucified Christ before his death, in full size). At the end of the left nave you will reach an altar dedicated to the Virgen de los Dolores (one of the first ones brought to the country). Another more modern image is the Christ of the Great Love (Luis Álvarez Duarte, 1981), which every year, on Good Friday, a Via Crucis is celebrated.
In the cathedral there is a mural commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, the bombs of the Embassy of Israel and the AMIA.
Virtual Tour Oficial Site La Catedral http://www.catedralbuenosaires.org.ar/