Buenos Aires: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Everything in Argentina has been decided on one square, and this walk goes from it down the avenue that was cut to look like Paris. The square was laid out at the second founding of the city in 1580 — the first attempt, in 1536, ended with the survivors eating their horses and leaving. Since 1977 the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have walked round the pyramid in the middle every Thursday afternoon, asking where their children are. Two hours on the flat.
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A short history of Buenos Aires
Pedro de Mendoza first founded the city in 1536, but hunger and attacks by local peoples led to its abandonment in 1541. In 1580 Juan de Garay founded it again. On 25 May 1810 the revolution that led to Argentina's independence broke out here, and in 1880 it officially became the federal capital. Waves of immigration from Italy and Spain gave it a European character, and in 1913 the first underground railway in Latin America opened here. The city has the largest Jewish community on the continent, and on 18 July 1994 85 people were killed in a bombing of the community building, AMIA, two years after the bombing of the Israeli embassy.
The ten best sights in Buenos Aires
1Plaza de MayoThe square where the country happens. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have walked round the central pyramid every Thursday since April 1977, and they still do.
2Casa RosadaThe presidential palace, pink because two earlier buildings in different colours were joined. The balcony is the one Peron and Evita spoke from.
3Metropolitan CathedralIt looks like a bank from outside — twelve Greek columns and no towers. Jose de San Martin, who freed three countries, is buried inside under permanent guard.
4CabildoThe colonial town hall, and the only eighteenth-century building left on the square. It once had eleven arches; street-widening took away six of them.
5Avenida de MayoCut through the city in 1894 in deliberate imitation of Paris, and the Spanish immigrants who settled along it gave it the cafes that are still there.
6Palacio BaroloBuilt in 1923 to the structure of Dante's Divine Comedy: twenty-two floors for the cantos, hell below, heaven in the lighthouse on top.
7Cafe TortoniOpen since 1858 and the oldest cafe in the country. Borges sat here; so does the queue outside, which is long and moves.
8CongresoThe parliament, with a dome of bronze that has gone green. Kilometre zero of the country's road network is on the square in front of it.
9Teatro ColonOpened in 1908 after twenty years of building and three architects, two of whom died during the work. Its acoustics are rated among the five best in the world.
10The ObeliskSixty-seven metres, raised in 1936 in four weeks for the city's four hundredth birthday. The council voted to demolish it two years later and the mayor refused.
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Buenos Aires →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Buenos Aires:
Free walking tours in Buenos Aires
The Square That Decides Things
Everything in Argentina has been decided on one square, and this walk goes from it down the avenue that was cut to look like Paris. The square was laid out at the second founding of the city in 1580 — the first attempt, in 1536, ended with the survivors eating their horses and leaving. Since 1977 the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have walked round the pyramid in the middle every Thursday afternoon, asking where their children are. Two hours on the flat.
- Plaza de Mayo · The pyramid in the centre was put up in 1811 to mark one year of independence and it is the oldest monument in the city. Around it, every Thursday since the thirtieth of April 1977, the Mothers have walked — fourteen women began it and three of the founders were themselves disappeared within eight months.
- Casa Rosada · Pink because two buildings of different colours were joined into one in 1884. From that balcony Peron spoke to the crowds, and on the seventeenth of October 1945 a crowd filled this square to demand his release from prison — the day Argentine politics changed and is still argued about.
- The Cathedral · Twelve Greek columns and no bell towers, which is why it looks like a bank. Inside, under a permanent military guard, lies Jose de San Martin — the general who crossed the Andes with an army and freed Argentina, Chile and Peru, and then went into exile in France and never came back.
- Cabildo · The colonial council house and the only eighteenth-century building left on the square. It had eleven arches; six were demolished to cut Avenida de Mayo and the Diagonal through, which tells you what this city did to its own past.
- Avenida de Mayo · Opened in 1894 and built deliberately in the image of Paris, by a city that had just become one of the richest in the world on beef and wheat. The Spanish immigrants who moved in along it gave it its cafes, and the first underground railway in the southern hemisphere runs beneath it, opened in 1913.
- Palacio Barolo · Built in 1923 by an Italian who wanted Dante's remains brought here for safekeeping. The building is the Divine Comedy: a hundred metres for the hundred cantos, twenty-two floors, hell in the basement and a lighthouse at the top that can be seen from Montevideo.
The South: Where the City Started and Was Left
South of the square is the oldest part of the city and the poorest, and the two facts are connected by one event: the yellow fever epidemic of 1871, which killed around eight per cent of the population in a few months and sent every family that could afford it north to Recoleta. The mansions they left were divided room by room among immigrants, and that is still visible. Two and a half hours, and the second half is best on Sunday.
- San Telmo · The oldest quarter, and the one the wealthy abandoned in 1871. Their houses became conventillos — one family to a room around a shared courtyard — and it was in those courtyards, among Italian, Spanish and African-descended neighbours, that tango was put together.
- Mercado de San Telmo · An iron hall of 1897 by Juan Antonio Buschiazzo, the same architect who designed the Palacio Barolo's street and much of Avenida de Mayo. It was built for the immigrants who had just filled the quarter.
- Plaza Dorrego · The second oldest square in the city, and on Sunday it is an antiques market that runs the length of Calle Defensa. In the evening the same square becomes a tango floor for whoever wants to dance.
- Parque Lezama · Tradition puts the first founding of Buenos Aires on this bluff in 1536, by Pedro de Mendoza. It failed: the settlers were besieged, ran out of food and are recorded as having eaten their horses and each other before abandoning the site five years later.
- Caminito · La Boca was built by Genoese dockworkers out of sheet iron and ships' paint, which is why the houses are those colours — each wall painted with whatever was left in the tin. In 1882 the quarter briefly declared itself an independent republic and raised the Genoese flag.
- La Bombonera · Boca Juniors' ground, and one side of it is flat because the club could not buy the last plot. The club's colours were chosen in 1906 by taking the flag of the first ship to enter the harbour, which happened to be Swedish.
North: Marble, Books and the Park
This is where the money went after 1871 and where it stayed. The walk covers the cemetery that is a city of marble, a bookshop inside a theatre, a museum built from one private collection, and the park a dictator laid out for himself before he was overthrown. Two and a half hours, and this half of the city is where you will eat and where dinner begins at ten at night, not before.
- Recoleta Cemetery · Four and a half thousand vaults laid out as streets, and burial here has always been about money rather than faith. Eva Peron's tomb is deliberately modest and lies under three metres of concrete and steel — she was buried in 1976, twenty-four years after her death, after her embalmed body had been hidden abroad for sixteen of them.
- Basilica del Pilar · From 1732, the second oldest church standing in the city, and the cemetery next door was originally its monastery garden. The tiles inside came from Spain as ballast in grain ships.
- Floralis Generica · A twenty-three metre steel flower given to the city by the architect who designed it, built to open at dawn and close at dusk on a hydraulic mechanism. The mechanism has broken repeatedly and it is often simply left open.
- El Ateneo Grand Splendid · A theatre from 1919 that became a cinema and then a bookshop in 2000, with the boxes kept as reading alcoves, the ceiling fresco intact and a cafe on the stage. The Guardian named it the most beautiful bookshop in the world.
- MALBA · Opened in 2001 from the private collection of one businessman who decided Latin American art should stay in Latin America. Frida Kahlo's self-portrait with monkey and parrot is here, bought in 1995.
- Bosques de Palermo · The park was the private estate of Juan Manuel de Rosas, who ruled Argentina for two decades until he was defeated on the third of February 1852. The new government turned his land into a public park on purpose, and named it after the date of his defeat.
Getting to Buenos Aires and getting around
- Ezeiza Airport · Thirty kilometres south-west and the only international gateway. The motorway in takes forty minutes at four in the morning and ninety at five in the afternoon.
- Aeroparque · The domestic airport, on the river inside the city. Flights to Iguazu, Bariloche and Ushuaia leave from here, not from Ezeiza.
- Retiro bus terminal · Seventy-five platforms and buses to every corner of the country. Argentine long-distance coaches have seats that lie flat, and the overnight to Mendoza is fourteen hours.
- Retiro station · Three stations side by side, the grandest built by a British company in 1915 with a roof shipped from Liverpool. Trains north to Tigre leave from here.
- Constitucion · The southern terminus, and the station that brought the workers who changed Argentine politics in the 1940s into the centre.
Cheap eats in Buenos Aires
Eight counters where Buenos Aires eats standing, and two things to know before you order. The first is the choripan — a split chorizo in a bread roll with chimichurri — which is the street food of the country and costs a few thousand pesos. The second is that the peso moves, so a price written here would be wrong by the time you read it; ask, and pay in cash where you can.
- Mercado de San Telmo · Open 9 to 8 · cash goes further
- Mercado de Belgrano · Open 8 to 8, closed Sunday
- Barrio Chino · Busiest at the weekend
- Feria de Mataderos · Sundays 11 to 8
- Puerto de Frutos · Open 10 to 6
- Calle Florida · All day · busiest at lunch
- Abasto · Open 10 to 10
- Cafe Tortoni · Open 8 to 10 · expect to wait
Museums in Buenos Aires
- MALBA · Closed Tuesday
- Museo de Bellas Artes · Free · closed Monday
- Museo Evita · Closed Monday
- Museo del Bicentenario · Free · closed Monday and Tuesday
- Museo Quinquela Martin · Closed Monday
- Museo Larreta · Closed Monday and Tuesday
- Museo Malvinas · Free · closed Monday
Parks and gardens in Buenos Aires
- Bosques de Palermo · Free · boats on the lake
- Jardin Japones · Small ticket · open daily
- Jardin Botanico · Free · open daily
- Reserva Ecologica · Free · closed Monday · take water
- Parque Tres de Febrero · Free · the ciclovia runs through it
- Parque Centenario · Free · the market is Saturday
- Parque Lezama · Free · quiet on a weekday
Things to do in Buenos Aires with kids
- Planetario · Shows most afternoons
- Ecoparque · Free · closed Monday
- Museo de La Plata · Closed Monday
- Tigre and the delta · A full day · boats run all day
- Puerto de Frutos · Open 10 to 6
- Usina del Arte · Free · check the weekend programme
- Puente de la Mujer · Free · the opening is not on a timetable
Holy places in Buenos Aires
- Metropolitan Cathedral · Free · the guard at San Martin's tomb changes hourly
- Basilica del Pilar · Free · quiet in the morning
- Manzana de las Luces · Guided visits only
- Basilica de Lujan · The walk is the first weekend of October
- Recoleta Cemetery · Small ticket · closes at six
- Chacarita · Free · open every day
- Parque Lezama church · Services on Sunday morning
Live music in Buenos Aires
- Teatro Colon · Tours daily · season March to December
- Avenida Corrientes · Late · the pizzerias are part of it
- Teatro Gran Rex · Check the listings on Corrientes
- Luna Park · Check what is on this week
- Plaza Dorrego · Sunday from six
- Palermo Hollywood · Thursday to Saturday
- CCK · Free · book online in advance
Frequently asked questions about Buenos Aires
What is there to see in Buenos Aires?
The top sights in Buenos Aires are Plaza de Mayo, Casa Rosada and Metropolitan Cathedral. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Buenos Aires?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Buenos Aires without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Buenos Aires?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Buenos Aires, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The Square That Decides Things.
How do you get to Buenos Aires and get around?
The main ways are Ezeiza Airport, Aeroparque and Retiro bus terminal. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Buenos Aires, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Buenos Aires that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Buenos Aires for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.