Bicentennial Museum

We decided to go back and try the museum again when it was open this time.  Its a small museum, but nicely done.  Its a brief two hundred year history of the country with a few artifacts from each era, largely focused on presidential/political history.  It was kind of strange after being in Italy where their history extends thousands of years, to be in a "new" country like the US with only a relatively short history.  There were relatively few pre-Colombian people in the region.  There is the colonial era dating back to the 1500s and then the period of nation building and independence in the 1800s.

The museum is underground, built around the remains of the old customs house that used to be right on the water's edge at the port.  The brick arches date back to the late 1800s.

Preceding the construction of the customs house, a fort stood along the shore of the river.

There was a really cool display that showed the construction along the shore of the river, starting in 1853.

The customs house is the half circle jutting out in to the water.  The buildings directly behind it on shore eventually became the Casa Rosada (President's house)

This image has the old building superimposed with more recent constructions.  The Customs house was actually destroyed in the 1880s to make room for more new buildings.

You can see how by 1990s the entire Bay Area was filled in with dirt and new apartment buildings.

You can see the distinct color of the Casa Rosada on the far right.  The mueseum and remains of the customs house are directly under the large Argentinian flag on the right.

The biggest disappointment was that all of the materials were in Spanish only.  There were TV monitors playing video footage and retelling history, but the subtitles were also in Spanish.  This seemed to be a perfect medium to accommodate non-Spanish speakers, or perhaps pamphlets at the door with an abbreviated history in English or Portuguese...nope. I don't expect everyone to accommodate English speakers, and we've gotten by fine throughout the city with my very limited Spanish, but if you are proud of your history and want to share it with the world, perhaps think about what languages other people who visit might be speaking.