Palais de Glace

The Palais de Glace is a French-style Belle Époque building in the Recoleta neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina, located at 1725 Posadas street. Modelled on the Palais des Glaces in Paris, the building was designed by J. L. Ruiz Basadre and inaugurated in 1911 as an ice skating rink and social club.

The circular ice rink occupied a central room around which were arranged theatre-style boxes and rooms for social gatherings. The refrigeration plant was housed in the basement and on the first floor was a balcony, a cafe and organ. The building has a domed roof with a large central skylight which provided natural light for the skating rink below.

As ice skating became less fashionable in the following decade, and tango gained increasing social acceptance, the Palais de Glace was converted into an elegant dance hall and played an important role in the promotion of this new dance phenomenon, initially opposed by the bourgeois elite. Many well-known tango orchestras and dancers appeared here over the years but towards the end of the 1920s the venue went into decline and in 1931 the building was taken over my the local authority and given to the Ministry of Education and Justice.