The amazing capital of an incredible country

Of all South America’s capitals, #Buenos-Aires is the most cultured and sophisticated: elegant restaurants, glamorous bars, historic cafés and heaving nightclubs, opera house, theaters, multi-screen cinemas, avant-garde galleries, and French-style palaces all underline its attachment to the arts and its eternal sense of style. Its inhabitants, #Porteños, are notoriously extravagant and well groomed but they are also hospitable and eager to show visitors around.

Of the city’s 48 barrios, the city centre (San Nicolás and Monserrat) is characterised by a contrasting atmosphere:

from Calle Florida, Avenida de Mayo and Avenida Corrientes to the converted docklands of Puerto Madero.

The parks and gardens provide shade in the many lively plazas; they add welcome splashes of color, particularly when ablaze with yellow, pink and mauve blooms in spring and, in some cases, autumn, too. 

The older south of the city begins just beyond the central Plaza de Mayo. The narrow streets are lined with some of the capital’s finest architecture, typified by late nineteenth-century townhouses.

Increasingly gentrified, San Telmo, is primarily known for its cutting-edge artists, lively antiques fair and touristy tango haunts. The north of the city is leafier and wealthier; you can ogle the French-style palaces of Retiro and Recoleta or head to Palermo.

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The Caminito (little path, in Spanish) is a street museum comprising colorful painted houses typical of the immigrant dwellings that came to characterize the port area towards the end of the 19th century. The “caminito” followed the route of an old stream that once flowed into the Riachuelo, and later, after the river dried up, formed part of the route of a railroad. After the closure of the railroad, the street was abandoned, until in the 1950s, a group of neighbors decided to regenerate the area and local artist Benito Quinquela Martín began using the buildings as a canvas.

The buildings made of wood and sheet metal are typical of the “conventillos“, precarious, communal dwellings built by Genoan immigrants in the 19th century. Many dwellings are built on raised foundations due to frequent floodings in the past.

The long years of military dictatorship that followed saw the city in lockdown, with the mothers of the disappeared one of the few visible signs of the turmoil underneath the surface. Since the return to democracy in 1983, Buenos Aires has been the most visible face of the country’s economic rollercoaster.

Buenos Aires entered the twenty-first century in retreat, as a grinding recession led to weeks of protests and looting that came to a horrendous head in December 2001, when widespread rioting led to dozens of deaths.