Nostalgic Iberian Grandeur in the Heart of the Pampas
Estancia Acelaín gives visitors the chance to glimpse, even relive, the opulent seignorial lifestyle of the great cattle and grain barons, whose manor homes still dot the Argentine countryside. Built in 1922 by Enrique Larreta, a prolific Hispanophile author and one of the country’s wealthiest estancieros, Acelaín was designed in the style of Moorish Spain, where Larreta spent his honeymoon in the early 1900s.
Larreta’s literary masterpiece, The Glory of Don Ramiro, is set in 16th-century southern Spain and explains the origins of the estancia’s imaginative decor, architecture, and landscaping redolent of – if not imported directly from – that place and time. His own prodigious collection of Spanish furniture and art from the 11th to the 17th centuries still graces the estancia. Perched on a promontory, the house overlooks the lush, fragrant Andalusian gardens that are the pride and joy of the current owners, Larreta’s descendants and avid horticulturalists.
Woodlands make up but a part of the 1,600-acre Edenic parkland, which abuts 15,000 acres of grainfields and grazing lands for cattle; both woodland and park offer guests countless idylls, by horse, on foot, or in your favorite hammock.
