The Travel Chica

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Have You Been to the Toilets and Bidets Museum?

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If you spend much time in Buenos Aires, you will find out about all sorts of tours. Of course, everyone knows about the tour of Teatro Colon. But a lesser-known but still pretty incredible building with an interesting history is Palacio de las Aguas.

And the best part…

It’s free!

The Exterior

The building looks pretty sweet from the outside. It is located on Avenida Cordoba, a frequent bus route of mine, so I passed it a million times. It is huge, taking up an entire city block.

Photo of exterior of Palacio de Las Aguas

Photo of Palacio de Las Aguas
The style of this building is quite eclectic and is yet another example of the upper classes of Argentina fancying everything European. Almost everything was pre-fabricated in Europe. There are over 300,000 tiles making up the exterior of the building, each individually numbered to enable easy placement.

The History

In the mid-19th century, Buenos Aires was experiencing massive population growth and several epidemics, including cholera and yellow fever. So the city decided to fix the water supply.

It took 7 years to build this massive palace. I think everything was built as a “palace” back then. The site was chosen because it was the highest point in the city at the time.

The building is 3 levels. It contains 12 water tanks (provided by a Belgian firm) with a total capacity of 72 million liters of water.

The tour is in Spanish, so I have to admit that I learned most of this by reading the large signs throughout the museum, making a little visit to Wikipedia, and asking an English-speaking tour guide.

The Museum

This is where I got the most amusement.

In addition to getting to see some of the ornate terracotta decorations that adorn the outside of the building….

… and some interesting plumbing contraptions…

Photo of large pipes

Photo of plumbing stuff

… you also get to see a plethora of toilets and bidets throughout history.

I have no idea what our guide was talking about, but we spent a solid 5 minutes staring at these toilets and bidets while she talked about them.

Yes, that is a window looking into a giant room filled with bidets.

Take the tour!

The tour is at 11am on Mondays and Wednesdays. The address is Avenida Cordoba 1950.

Have you been to an odd historical place like this before?

Comments

  1. I haven’t been to an odd historical place like this one before but I have learned about the history of Melbourne’s sewer systems and Sydney’s stormwater systems over the internet.

    Both were originally dug by hand. Melbourne’s sewer system was originally dug around the time the Palacio de las Aguas was being built and was predominantly made of brick. It is still in use today however in recent decades there have been extensions made to it and at the moment they are building massive tunnels under the city to cope with the demands of a growing population currently at 4 million and growing at around 100,000 per year.

    The old pumping station at Spotswood in inner city Melbourne near where I used to live is on exhibition and I still believe they do tours. It’s part the Scienceworks complex that has a lot of school kids attend as part of school excursions or because their parents take them. The original pumping station ran until about 1913 when it was superseded by a bigger one. Nowadays all the sewage ends up in big ponds to the west and south east of the city.

    But back in the day when this thing was originally being built it was a huge deal as Melbourne used to be known as Marvelous Smellbourne because of the smell of raw sewage that was often dumped into the streets and the backs of alleys. A huge amount of money was invested and the people were on the politicians backs right up until it was finished. Something us Australians could learn to do again today.

    I mentioned Sydney’s stormwater system because I saw pictures of the original sandstone diggings on the internet which were made back in the late 1700s and early 1800s by convicts sent over from England in shackles and chains.

    Part of the original diggings are still in service and tacked on to newer parts of the Sydney stormwater network. In Australia there are a group of urban explorers who call themselves the Cave Clan who go exploring the storm water drains all over the country and in recent years they’ve put some of their discoveries up online. That’s where I found out about it.

    • Buenos Aires honestly now has a Museum of Books. I’m not kidding. It’s right at the foot of the hill that the National Library is resting on. (And that was the location of the Presidential residence when that Evita Peron was First Lady.)

      There are about 100 museums in all in Buenos Aires and every year they have a “Night of the Museums” in November where they are all open until 3am (at least most stay open that late) and the streets are teeming with families way past people’s bedtimes.

      If you’re ever here, you should go. But watch out for the pigeons. They like to end their evenings in trees and after a long day of eating, their loaded with ammo and their aim can be deadly accurate.
      Chance Miller recently posted..Time Out selects BAlocal’s Art Tours in 2011/12 Spring Summer issue

    • In all fairness, it is not necessarily a “toilet museum.” I think they want it to be more about the history of developing a system to deliver clean water to such a large population.

      But I just got stuck on the toilets and bidets.
      The Travel Chica recently posted..My First Argentine Asado

    • “Noche de los Museos” was not too long ago. When I looked at the list of museums, there were hundreds. There was even a taxidermy museum! Unfortunately, it is in a not-so-great area, so I didn’t go.

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