San Martín Cultural Center

With theatre audiences of nearly 350,000 a year, the San Martín Cultural Center (Centro Cultural General San Martín) is Argentina's largest public cultural center. Together with the privately run Paseo La Plaza a block away, it makes the 1500 block of Corrientes Avenue arguably Latin America's leading theatre district. The city government runs the center, which hosts a wide range of cultural and artistic events.

Local architect Mario Roberto Álvarez designed the 12-floor building, built between 1962 and 1973 beside the theatre of the same name. Its halls range from the 70-seat Sala Ernesto Bianco, used for dance, to the 750-seat Sala A/B. There are also workshop rooms and the Buenos Aires Audiovisual Nucleus, which holds more than 7,000 documentary works. Two small parks, the Plaza de las Américas and the Patio de Esculturas, lie at its eastern end.

The center housed the National Commission on the Disappeared (CONADEP) in 1984 and the first session of the Buenos Aires City Legislature in 1996.