Qualla: Pirámide de Mayo

Pirámide de Mayo: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adam Jones, Ph.D., CC BY-SA 3.0. Argentina's oldest national monument was nearly torn down, more than once, by the very nation it honours. The Pirámide de Mayo went up in 1811, ordered by the Primera Junta to celebrate the first anniversary of the May Revolution, the uprising that set Buenos Aires on the road to independence from Spain. In the decades that followed, presidents and city officials repeatedly proposed knocking it down to build something grander. Each time, it survived. Two centuries on, this modest white obelisk at the centre of the Plaza de Mayo has outlasted every scheme to replace it, and become something none of its planners could have foreseen: the still point around which a country's conscience turns.

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Image: Adam Jones, Ph.D. | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pirámide de Mayo: A Monument Raised in Four Days

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jddios26, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 5 April 1811, with the Cabildo's approval, the city resolved to mark Argentina's first national day by building a pyramid in the Plaza de la Victoria. The choice of a pyramid was never explained; some think it echoed the obelisks on the Porte Saint-Denis in Paris. At the insis...

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Image: Jddios26 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pirámide de Mayo: Liberty in a Phrygian Cap

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taken by the uploader, w:es:Usuario:Barcex, CC BY-SA 3.0. The structure visible today is largely the work of the painter and architect Prilidiano Pueyrredón, who reworked it in 1856, building the new monument directly over the old. He crowned it with a statue of Liberty by the French sculptor Joseph Dubourdieu, a robed female figure wea...

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Image: Taken by the uploader, w:es:Usuario:Barcex | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pirámide de Mayo: Moved Sixty Metres, Saved by Indecision

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gelpgim22 (Sergio Panei Pitrau), CC BY 3.0. The plaza changed around the pyramid. In 1883 the old arcade that had split the square in two was demolished, joining the halves into the modern Plaza de Mayo. Mayor Torcuato de Alvear wanted to raze the pyramid and build a more imposing monument, and he canvassed the country's e...

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Image: Gelpgim22 (Sergio Panei Pitrau) | CC BY 3.0

Pirámide de Mayo: The Circle the Mothers Walk

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gelpgim22 (Sergio Panei Pitrau), CC BY 3.0. On 30 April 1977, fourteen women came to the Plaza de Mayo to demand word of their sons and daughters, seized and disappeared by the military dictatorship. Ordered by police to keep moving, they began instead to walk in a slow circle around the pyramid, white kerchiefs on their h...

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Image: Gelpgim22 (Sergio Panei Pitrau) | CC BY 3.0