Café Tortoni

Café Tortoni opened in 1858 under the direction of the French immigrant Jean Touan (sometimes spelled Touan or Toaun), who named it after the celebrated Café Tortoni on the Boulevard des Italiens in Paris. The first location was the northwest corner of Esmeralda and Rivadavia. In the early 1880s the café moved to the ground floor of a residence belonging to Saturnino Unzué on Rivadavia street in the Montserrat neighborhood. With the opening of Avenida de Mayo the building acquired a new façade designed by the Norwegian architect Alejandro Christophersen; the Avenida de Mayo entrance was inaugurated on 26 October 1894. Toward the end of the nineteenth century another Frenchman, Celestino Curutchet, acquired the establishment.^[1][2][3]

From its earliest decades the Tortoni functioned as a gathering place for intellectuals, politicians, and artists. In 1926 the painter Benito Quinquela Martín founded La Peña (also called the Agrupación Gente de Artes y Letras) in the basement bodega. The peña operated until 1943, organizing poetry readings, literary contests, lectures, and musical evenings. Regular participants included Alfonsina Storni, Baldomero Fernández Moreno, Roberto Arlt, Jorge Luis Borges, Conrado Nalé Roxlo, and international visitors such as José Ortega y Gasset, Federico García Lorca, and Luigi Pirandello. Political figures including Lisandro de la Torre and Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear also frequented the tables.^[1][2]

Carlos Gardel was a habitué. According to the testimony of Enrique Cadícamo, he preferred the table on the right-hand side of the main salon, beside the window when entering from Rivadavia, where he could meet friends away from admirers. Gardel sang at least twice in the Tortoni: once at a reception in the Bodega honoring the Spanish dramatist Jacinto Benavente (with José Razzano) and again in June 1927 during a homage to Luigi Pirandello. The café’s own materials and secondary accounts confirm these appearances.^[2][4][5]

The tango “Viejo Tortoni,” with lyrics by Héctor Negro and music by Eladia Blázquez, later commemorated the café; Susana Rinaldi has recorded it. The text evokes the palco, the avenue, and the returning bohemians of earlier decades. Between 1962 and 1974 another writers’ peña associated with the magazine El Escarabajo de Oro met in the rear of the premises. Today the basement continues to present tango and jazz (including long-running Saturday appearances by the Fénix Jazz Band since 1978), book launches, and poetry contests, while the main floor retains its marble tables, oak furnishings, and nineteenth-century decoration. The Academia Nacional del Tango occupies space in the same building complex.^[1][2]

In the history of Buenos Aires café culture the Tortoni occupies a singular position: it predates the mass immigration wave that reshaped the city after 1880, survived the opening of Avenida de Mayo, and absorbed successive generations of literary and musical life. Its association with Gardel is not that of a working milonga or cabaret but of a refined public space in which the leading tango singer could appear both as customer and as occasional performer. The peña of 1926–1943 further embedded the café in the artistic networks that ran parallel to, and sometimes intersected with, the commercial tango industry of the golden age. Its continued operation as both historic café and performance venue links the nineteenth-century porteño café tradition to the present-day tourist and local circuits that still center on Avenida de Mayo.^[1][2][5]

Founding, relocation, and architecture

Jean Touan’s 1858 establishment on Esmeralda and Rivadavia, the 1880s move to the Unzué residence, and Christophersen’s 1890s façade for the new avenue produced the building that still stands. Curutchet’s ownership at the turn of the century stabilized the business that has operated without interruption since.^[1][3]

La Peña and literary life

Quinquela Martín’s 1926 peña in the basement created a sustained forum for poets, painters, and musicians until 1943. The documented presence of Storni, Borges, Arlt, and international visitors such as Lorca and Pirandello situates the Tortoni at the center of porteño intellectual sociability in the interwar decades.^[1][2]

Gardel and tango performance

Cadícamo’s recollection of Gardel’s preferred table and the two documented singing appearances (Benavente reception and the 1927 Pirandello homage) constitute the café’s direct tango legacy. The later composition “Viejo Tortoni” and the ongoing basement shows extend that connection into the present.^[2][4][5]