Café Tortoni

This guide to Cafe Tortoni in Buenos Aires begins in a basement on the twenty-fourth of May, nineteen twenty-six, where a circle of painters and poets calling themselves La Peña treated the cellar like sacred ground. You'll hear how the tango singer Carlos Gardel became part of that ritual, and why the cafe kept a table permanently reserved in his name. It also traces the writer Jorge Luis Borges's own corner of the room, and the other figures said to have passed through the same doors. Ask to see the basement before you sit down at street level.