Buenos Aires

Sight-seeing and culture

Culturally, Buenos Aires has influenced western diet and fashions through exports of cattle products (beef and leather), as well as reflecting European and North American diets in unexpected ways - the Quilmes brewery in the south of the city's suburbs is apparently the largest in the world. But it's in the finer arts that Argentina has really come into its own. The tango, perhaps the twentieth century's most famous dance form, was born in the city's docklands and the World Tango Championships are held annually in Buenos Aires. Recommending places to go to catch it isn't really necessary - anywhere south of the Microcentro (the barrio your hotel will almost certainly either be in or near) will be positively dripping with the atmosphere, music and dance, as well as a lot of artisanship inspired by it.

'La Caminito, La Boca - probably the most photographed street in South America'.

Argentina's other biggest cultural export was one of the twentieth century's finest writers, Jorge Luis Borges. Born in 1899, Borges was educated in Europe and moved back to his homeland aged around 20. He was obscure outside Argentina until well into his sixties, when his first major collection of short stories Ficciones (Fictions) was translated into English. Borges' stories evoke fantastical worlds and characters, but always with something unsettling familiar to them - as if real life were all an illusion. Borges has had an incalculable influence on almost all fiction written in Latin America since the middle of the twentieth century, and Gabriel García Márquez cited him as the father of magic realism, also naming him in his Nobel Literature Prize acceptance speech. Borges himself was never awarded the prize, seemingly due to some confused political views which he later wholly repented of. The best place to start an exploration of his work is with either Fictions or The Aleph, both readily available in English-language publications.

Argentines were once described as ‘Spanish speaking Italians who want to be English,’ and Buenos Aires has been called ‘the Paris of the south’. Both descriptions are somewhat clichéd, but they do get at one key part of the place’s psyche – that this is a European corner of South America. Buenos Aires is much more than only that, though, with each barrio (district) of Capital Federal retaining a distinctive feel. There are streets worth photographing - from South America’s most famous, La Caminito in the dock district of La Boca, to the world’s widest, Avenida 9 de Julio, a motorway in all but name running right through the city centre. At the centre of 9 de Julio stands the 100-metre-high Obelisco, a sky-piercing monument to Argentine independence.

A little way to the north, the real culture of the city makes itself known, with the immense Teatro Colón, one of the world’s finest opera houses, bringing a real sense of the European to the city. The northern-central districts of La Recoleta and Palermo, with their expanses of green parks and fine houses, make for a nice urban walk, and the Recoleta Cemetry is a morbidly fascinating place to visit, and contains the final resting places of numerous Argentine presidents as well as Perón's wife Eva Duarte, better known to the outside world as Evita.

To the south of the city centre, in La Boca, you’ll find the most stereotypically porteño scenes, albeit ones spoiled by the masses of tourists and tacky trinket shops they generate. You’re very unlikely to find your way down to La Caminito and not see it covered in North American and European tourists, but you can hardly visit Buenos Aires and not go there. The barrio of San Telmo contains many nice bars and clubs, as well as several tango venues which will be more than happy to extort some money from you for an ‘authentic experience’, but perhaps no less impressive – and certainly a lot more earthy – are the impromptu night-time street performances in the city’s business and shopping heart, the Microcentro, which is within walking distance.

Central Buenos Aires is a very safe city to walk around at night - it's not unusual to see porteños out for the evening strolling down the street with very young children even after midnight - and the ridiculously late hours lived by all residents mean you’ll be unlikely to come across a dark and deserted corner of it whatever time you’re out at. The people are friendly and will give you a great welcome, and if you’re stuck for words in conversation, just ask them about their country – there’s nothing they like talking about more.

(next to Getting Around/Eating, Drinking and Nightlife)