The café's history
Café de los Angelitos' history, explained
From Bar Rivadavia in 1890 to Gardel's regular haunt to the 2007 restoration.
See Café de los Angelitos tickets on GetYourGuide ↗The café's history
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1890 | Opens as Bar Rivadavia on the corner of Rivadavia and Rincón |
| 1920 | Renamed Café de los Angelitos |
| 2007 | Fully restored and reopened as a two-storey theatre |
| Today | Nightly dinner-and-show, one seating a night |
Bar Rivadavia, 1890
The building on the corner of Avenida Rivadavia and Rincón opened its doors in 1890 as Bar Rivadavia, in what was then a working Buenos Aires neighbourhood rather than a tourist route. Balvanera in the late 19th century was a district of new arrivals and small trades, and a corner café like this one was where a lot of that daily life actually happened.
Renamed in 1920
The café took the name Café de los Angelitos in 1920, and the name has stuck through more than a century of Buenos Aires history since — wars, changes of government, and the rise and near-disappearance of tango itself as a popular form.
The café that heard Gardel first
Carlos Gardel — the singer most responsible for turning tango from a dance-hall style into a serious musical form, and still Argentina's best-known cultural export — was a regular at Café de los Angelitos before his own fame arrived. That connection is a large part of why the café has kept its place in tango history rather than fading into just another old Buenos Aires bar.
Closed, then rebuilt
Like a lot of Buenos Aires' historic 'bares notables' (notable bars, a category the city itself recognises and protects), Café de los Angelitos went through a period of decline before undergoing a full restoration, completed in 2007. The rebuild brought back the room's stained glass, marble accents and ornate mirrors, and added the two-storey theatre space where the dinner and show now run.
A living café, not a museum
Since the restoration, the café has run its dinner-and-show nightly rather than treating the historic room as something to be looked at from behind a rope. The building holds over a hundred original photographs documenting Buenos Aires life across its history, on view in the same rooms where dinner is served.
Why the history matters to the evening
None of this is backdrop dressing — the show itself is built around the century of tango the café has actually witnessed, moving from the 1920s style through to Astor Piazzolla's later work. Knowing the building was Bar Rivadavia before it was Los Angelitos, and that Gardel drank here before anyone knew his name, changes what you're looking at during the performance rather than just what you're told about it.