Museo de la Inmigración (Immigrants' Hotel)

About this place

The Immigrants' Hotel is a huge building beside the old docks of Buenos Aires, built between 1906 and 1911 to receive the immigrants arriving by ship from Europe and elsewhere, guide them, house them and send them on to work in their new country. Its sleeping block had four floors holding up to three thousand immigrants, with four dormitories per floor of two hundred and fifty beds each; on the ground floor a vast dining hall with Carrara marble tables fed a thousand people per sitting, and a library offered maps and books about the new land. On the third floor, where the old dormitories were, the Museum of Immigration has opened since 2013, run by the National University of Tres de Febrero with the national migration office. It shows the old iron beds, suitcases, photographs, documents and letters, telling the story of the millions who came from Europe, Asia and Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, alongside contemporary art exhibitions. Entry is free Wednesday to Sunday, with guided tours at weekends.