Galerías Pacífico

This guide to Galerias Pacifico in Buenos Aires follows the Portuguese cameraman Arturo Santana, who walked into this mall in 1987 to film a promotional spot and felt something in his body recognize the space before his mind did as he rode the escalator down. It traces the gallery's construction in 1888 as a copy of a Parisian department store, and asks what happened here in the late 1970s that made Santana ask to see the basement below the one being filmed. Above the escalators, five painters once shared a single celebrated dome.