Borges's Buenos Aires: Palermo, the Library and the Aleph

Jorge Luis Borges was born on 24 August 1899 into a family living in Palermo, then a poor area of Buenos Aires. He later said that if he had to name the chief event of his life, it would be his father's library, an English collection of over a thousand volumes at home. Palermo is also where he first wrote poetry, and a poem of his names a typical square beside his childhood home. The street once called Serrano now carries his name, and the square is a weekend craft market.

Location precision: The family home is not pinned; the marker sits on Plaza Serrano, the square beside his childhood home.

Visitor guidance: Plaza Serrano has craft stalls at weekends, with bars and shops on the adjoining streets.

The Tortoni opened in 1858 and moved to its present address in 1880. From 1926 until 1943 it hosted La Peña, a group that backed the arts and letters of Buenos Aires. The list of people present at its gatherings includes Jorge Luis Borges, alongside Roberto Arlt and José Ortega y Gasset. The basement room, La Bodega, still stages tango and jazz.

Visitor guidance: The basement room, La Bodega, hosts tango and jazz.

In 1938 Borges found work as first assistant at the Miguel Cané Municipal Library, in a working-class area with so few books that he was told cataloguing more than 100 a day would leave his colleagues idle. The task took him about an hour. He spent the rest of each day in the library's basement, writing and translating.

Location precision: The sources name only the library in a working-class area; the pin marks where the map database places the Miguel Cané library today.

In "The Aleph", the narrator visits a house on Calle Garay every 30 April, the birthday of the dead Beatriz Viterbo. Her cousin Carlos Argentino Daneri is writing an epic poem describing every location on the planet. When the house is to be demolished, Daneri says its cellar holds the Aleph, a point in space that contains all other points. The narrator sees a sphere little more than an inch across, then pretends to have seen nothing, as revenge. A postscript says the house was demolished.

Location precision: The Calle Garay house exists only in the story; the pin marks the street, not any building.

The library's Mexico Street building opened in 1901 and was designed for the National Lottery, which is why its staircase carries lottery ornaments. Borges ran the institution from 1955 through 1973, with Edmundo José Clemente as vice director. Soon after his appointment he was told to give up reading and writing because of his weakened sight. He resigned as director as soon as Perón was re-elected in 1973. The old building now houses the National School of Librarians.

Visitor guidance: The old building now houses the National School of Librarians.

Borges chaired the honorary commission that drafted the needs of a new library building. It rose on the site of the Unzué Palace, home of Juan Perón and Evita, demolished in 1958 for political reasons. The brutalist structure was designed in 1961, construction began only in 1971, and the library was inaugurated on 10 April 1992, six years after Borges died in Geneva. The site lies between the avenues Libertador and Las Heras.