Qualla: Llao Llao Hotel

Llao Llao Hotel: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It burned to the ground less than two years after it opened. On the night of October 26, 1939, the original Llao Llao Hotel - a vast confection of Patagonian cypress and logs, barely two years old - went up in flames on its hilltop above the lakes. Most owners would have walked away. Instead, the architect rebuilt the whole thing within a year, this time in reinforced concrete and stone, and the second Llao Llao has stood ever since on its hill between Moreno Lake and Lake Nahuel Huapi, in the Andean foothills outside San Carlos de Bariloche.

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Llao Llao Hotel: A Man Named Bustillo

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The architect was Alejandro Bustillo, and Llao Llao became the defining work of what Argentines came to call the Bariloche Style - alpine forms in local stone and timber, grand but rooted in their mountain setting. His first version, inaugurated in 1938, was almost entirely wood,...

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Llao Llao Hotel: The Lean Years

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Grand hotels are expensive to keep, and Llao Llao did not always have a willing patron. In 1976 it closed entirely, starved of the funds its upkeep demanded. For years the great building stood empty above the lake, and emptiness invited the worst. Thieves stripped what they could...

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Llao Llao Hotel: Second Life

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Rescue came through finance rather than romance. In 1993 the hotel reopened after its ownership passed to CEI Citicorp Holdings, settled against Argentine government bonds. The property company IRSA bought it in 1997 for 13.3 million dollars, later selling half its stake to the S...

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Llao Llao Hotel: Where the Music Lives

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A building this dramatic deserves a soundtrack, and Llao Llao supplies one each year. The hotel hosts Semana Musical Llao Llao, an annual festival of classical music that fills its rooms with chamber works and recitals against a backdrop of forest, water, and snow-streaked peaks....

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