The Munich Brewery/Museum Center of Buenos Aires
Puerto Madero’s Museum Center of Buenos Aires co-ordinates the city’s various museums and hosts seminars and other activities including film showings in their small cinema.
The Museum Center is worth visiting as much for the building and its history as for the activity inside. The center is housed in the old Cervecería Munich, or Münich Beer House, dating to 1927. Constructed during the peak of German immigration to Buenos Aires, it was designed by Hungarian architect Andrés Kálnay, noted for designing some of the city’s other institutions, primarily, Luna Park stadium.
Amazingly, considering the construction methods available at the time, the detailed building was completed in four months. Aside from being considered an architectural triumph, the brewery was equipped to handle thirsty crowds, with a complex system of beer lines and the largest refrigeration unit in any business of Buenos Aires at the time.
The eclectic Bavarian-style building incorporates art deco influences with design touches that celebrate Munich folklore and the world of beer.
The mansion’s features include ample terraces, surrounded by intricate carved columns, stone goats encasing the wide staircases and an abundance of stained-glass windows depicting pastoral scenes, coats of arms and German beer maidens. Along the terrace walls there are stencils illustrating scenes of Oktoberfest, farmers, jokers and stout, German couples surrounded by beer barrels and horses. In the garden you can also view the fountains of Neptune and Naiades, created in the mid-1860’s, complimenting the nearby Water Nymphs’ Fountain near the entrance to the Ecological Reserve.
From its 1927 debut, the brewery was a popular gathering place among the Buenos Aires’ elite, particularly on a summer days and remained so during the next three decades.
In the daytime this was a popular spot thanks in part to its location near the Balneario Municipal Sur, a beachfront constructed nine years earlier on the banks of the River Plate, which was still clean enough to swim in at the time.
At night visitors would come to drink what was then considered a highly nutritious drink – strong, dark, German-style beer. Immigrants and hipsters of the day would gather to dance the waltz and hear the live music of musicians collectively known as the ‘The Artists of the Balneario.’
‘The Master,’ race car driver, Juan Manuel Fangio; journalist and politician, Leopoldo Lugones and Swiss-born poet Alfonsina Storni were among the Cervecería Munich habitues.
Buenos Aires’ narrative even has it that the perpetual man on the town, tango great, Carlos Gardel once gave an impromptu performance at the brewery.
With the stark decline of the Costanera Sur through the years — before it’s revitalization in the 90’s — the Münich beer house finally closed in the 1970’s. Some decorative statues seen around the museum today were resurrected from the muddy banks nearby where they laid like neglected tombs of Buenos Aires’ splendorous past.
With the new development in the area in the 1990’s the restoration of the beer house began. Entel, a telecommunication company first briefly occupied the building before it was transformed into the Museum Center of Buenos Aires in 2002.
Interesting guided afternoon tours are available in Spanish, English, Portuguese and Italian and can be arranged by calling the number below.
Museum Center of Buenos Aires/Munich Brewery
Av. de los Italianos 851
Costanera Sur/Puerto Madero
Tel: 4516-0943/ 4/9
• Hours:
Mon-Sun 10am–6pm
Sat &Sun: 10am-7pm
• Residents: AR$1/Non-residents: AR$3
