Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno

This guide to the Biblioteca Nacional in Buenos Aires follows the library through two very different pasts on the same plot of ground. Jorge Luis Borges, named director in 1955, the same year his eyesight failed for good, ran the institution for eighteen years without ever seeing its shelves, though not from this building. You'll hear about the Unzue Palace that once stood here, where Eva Perón died in 1952, and why the government that overthrew her husband chose to tear it down rather than preserve it. From there the guide follows the winning design through years of dictatorship and economic collapse.