Palacio Libertad (former Kirchner Cultural Centre)
Beaux-Arts former central post office turned cultural centre, built around the Ballena Azul concert hall.
The building was begun in 1889 as the Palacio de Correos y Telecomunicaciones, Argentina's central post office, to a design by the French architect Norbert Maillart. Work stopped repeatedly and the Beaux-Arts block, with its mansard roofs and rusticated granite base, was not finished until 1928. Postal and telegraph services moved out in the 2000s, and a conversion led by B4FS Arquitectos turned the nine floors and roughly 100,000 square metres into a cultural centre, opened in May 2015.
Its centrepiece is the national auditorium, known as the Ballena Azul after the blue curves of its suspended shell, which seats about 1,750 and holds a concert organ; the National Symphony Orchestra is based here. Above it, La Cúpula stages concerts and installations beneath a glazed dome with views over the city, while galleries, smaller halls and rehearsal rooms occupy the former sorting floors. The centre was renamed Palacio Libertad Domingo Faustino Sarmiento in 2024.
Highlights
- La Ballena Azul, a suspended symphony hall seating about 1,750
- Beaux-Arts post office by Norbert Maillart, completed in 1928
- La Cúpula, a glazed top-floor hall with views across the city
- Home stage of the Argentine National Symphony Orchestra
