#506 Argentina...Thanks Vivian!

The left 75c stamp was issued in 2006 celebrating Centenary of Esquel,which is a town in the northwest of the province of Chubut, in the Argentine Patagonia. It is located in the Futaleufú Department, of which it is the government's site. The town's name derives from a Mapuche term meaning "thorn", which refers to the characteristics of the local flora, including several spiny bushes, most famously the Calafate (Berberis buxifolia).

The founding of the town dates back to the arrival of Welsh immigrants in Chubut in 1865. The settlement was created on 25 February 1906, as an extension of the Colonia 16 de Octubre, now known as Trevelin.

The middle 75c stamp is from 2003 Christmas issue showing Purmamarca clay creche figures.

The right 75c stamp is from 2003 20th Century Architecture issue depicting Barolo Palace in Buenos Aires.

During the 1910s. two people dreamed of bringing poet Dante Alighieri´s ashes to Buenos Aires: the industrialist Luis Barolo (1869-1922) and the architect Mario Palanti (1885-1979). For this purpose they built a sanctuary on 1300 Av. De Mayo.

The Barolo Palace was the highest city building before the Kavanagh was built in 1935. It has a height of 100 metres ending on the lantern which used to have 300.000 bulbs. On September 14 1923 it transmitted with its lights the result of the boxing bout between Firpo and Dempsey.

Built in an architectural style combining references to Venetian gothic and religious Indian architecture, the Barolo Palace surprised people from the very beginning. The Argentine historian Carlos Hilger asserts that this is the major example of “esoteric” architecture from the beginning the 20th. Century.

The building has plenty of references to Dante. The bulbs in the cupola represent the nine angelical choirs and the mystical rose. In the cupola we find the Southern Cross which can be seen aligned with the axis of the Barolo Palace during the first days of June at 19.45 hs.

The general division of the building and the poem is done in three parts: Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. The ground floor is Hell, the first 14 floors are Purgatory, and following floors are Paradise and the cupola represents God.

The number of Hell hierarchies is nine, and nine are the arches of access to the building which represent initiation steps. Each arch has Latin phrases taken from nine different works from the Bible to Virgil. The cupola resembles that of the Budanishar Hindu temple dedicated to Tantra “representing the union between Dante and Beatrice.

The songs from Dante´s work are a hundred just as the height of the building is a 100 mts. The majority of songs in the poem have eleven or twenty two stanzas; the building has eleven modules per front, and twenty two modules per block. The height is twenty two floors. This set of numbers represents the circle which was, to Dante the perfect figure.

The Barolo Palace has been Historical National Monument since 1997.