Four days in Buenos Aires: built with Paris money, run on Italian hours

Three nights in one city, walked as four neighbourhoods: Avenida de Mayo and the opera house, the old south around San Telmo, Recoleta and Palermo, then La Boca on the way to the airport.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Buenos Aires
Places
10 across 4 days
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Buenos Aires was built by people who had suddenly become very rich and wanted everyone to know. Between about 1880 and 1914 the beef and grain money went into opera houses, marble palaces, boulevards and a cemetery laid out like a small city, most of it copied straight from Paris. Then the money left, and the buildings stayed.

That is the first surprise. The second is who lives in them. Half the country traces back to Italy, and it shows in the surnames, the volume of an ordinary conversation, the pizzerias that have been arguing about mozzarella since the 1930s, and the fact that a restaurant filling up at ten in the evening is a restaurant doing normal business.

Three nights is enough for the centre, the southern barrios and Recoleta without a single crosstown dash. The city is flat, the blocks are regular, and almost all of it is walked.

Highlights

  • The guided tour of Teatro Colon, which spends as much time on the acoustics as on the gilt
  • Palacio Barolo, an office block built to the plan of Dante's Divine Comedy
  • Recoleta Cemetery, where the tombs are streets of little marble houses and one of them is Eva Peron's
  • The Sunday antiques fair spilling out of Plaza Dorrego across San Telmo
  • A steak dinner ordered at ten at night, which is when Argentines eat one

Where to stay

Buenos Aires

Three million people live inside the city proper and something like fifteen million in the wider metropolitan area, spread flat across the plain behind the River Plate. There are forty eight barrios, and visitors realistically use six of them. The good news is that those six sit in a rough line from the river down to the old port, so four days here barely repeat a street.

Three nights is the shortest stay that does not feel like a connection. The first afternoon takes the theatre district, the second Plaza de Mayo and San Telmo, the third Recoleta and Palermo, and the last morning La Boca. Long-haul flights home leave Ezeiza in the evening, so that last day is a real one rather than a scramble.

Day by day

Day 1 in Buenos Aires

Avenida de Mayo and the opera house

Avenida de Mayo was cut through the old city in the 1890s to link the presidential palace with the congress building, and the Spanish and Italian architects who filled it in gave Buenos Aires the streetscape it is still famous for. It is a ten minute walk end to end and worth doing slowly.

Start with coffee rather than a sight, because the flight was long and nothing here opens early anyway. Then two buildings, both of which need to be booked rather than wandered into.

Teatro Colon runs guided tours through the day in Spanish and English, and they sell out in high season. Buy the slot before you land.

  1. 12:30

    Cafe Tortoni

    Other

    Trading since 1858 and restored to look it, with marble tables, stained glass and waiters in waistcoats. Order a submarino, a glass of hot milk with a bar of chocolate to sink in it, and do not be in a hurry.

  2. 14:30

    Palacio Barolo

    Architecture

    An office building laid out as a diagram of the Divine Comedy, with hell in the basement, purgatory up the shaft and a lighthouse at the top for paradise. Tours run to the lantern and have to be reserved ahead.

  3. 16:30

    Teatro Colón

    Culture

    Argentina was among the richest countries on earth when this was built, and the opera house it paid for is still ranked with the best in the world for sound. The tour covers the horseshoe auditorium, the workshops under it and the gallery where the acoustics are supposedly best.

With more time: The Obelisco is five minutes north, standing in the middle of Avenida 9 de Julio, which is twenty two lanes wide and claims to be the widest street in the Americas. Cross it at the lights and count. Avenida Corrientes, running west from the Obelisco, is where the pizzerias and the late bookshops are and it stays open absurdly late.

Day 2 in Buenos Aires

Plaza de Mayo, then south into San Telmo

Everything political that has happened in Argentina has happened on Plaza de Mayo, from the 1810 revolution to the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who have walked their circuit around the central pyramid every Thursday afternoon since 1977. The square is ringed by the buildings that ran the country in each of its eras.

The cathedral is the surprise. From outside it looks like a bank, twelve columns and a portico and no towers at all, and inside is the tomb of Jose de San Martin, the general who liberated Argentina, Chile and Peru, guarded around the clock by soldiers in nineteenth century uniform.

After lunch the day goes south into San Telmo, which is where the city started and where it stayed after the rich abandoned it during a yellow fever epidemic in the 1870s. The streets are cobbled, the buildings are low, and the market is the point.

  1. 09:30

    Casa Rosada

    Architecture

    The presidential offices, pink since the 1870s and the backdrop to every political photograph taken in this country. The museum in the basement is free, and guided tours of the building itself run at weekends and need booking.

  2. 10:45

    Catedral Metropolitana

    Religious

    Neoclassical outside to the point of looking secular, and considerably warmer inside. San Martin's tomb sits in a side chapel with a permanent ceremonial guard, changed on the hour.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch on Calle Defensa

    Eat

    Defensa runs from the square down into San Telmo and is lined with cafes and parrillas the whole way. Anywhere with a chalkboard menu del dia will feed you three courses for the price of a sandwich further north.

  4. 14:30

    Mercado San Telmo

    Architecture

    An iron-framed market hall from the end of the nineteenth century, still doing its original job. Butchers, greengrocers and cheese counters on one side, antique dealers selling soda siphons and old coins on the other, and a handful of very good food stalls in between.

With more time: El Zanjon de Granados, two blocks away, is a nineteenth century mansion built over the ravine that was the city's first water course, excavated down through two centuries of tunnels and foundations. It can only be seen on a guided tour and it is the best hour in San Telmo. If you are here on a Sunday, Plaza Dorrego fills with an antiques fair that spreads for blocks along Defensa, and it is worth reshuffling the day for.

Day 3 in Buenos Aires

Recoleta Cemetery, the art museum and the bookshop

Recoleta Cemetery is the reason to give a day to this side of town. The old families built themselves marble houses instead of graves, in whatever style was fashionable the year they died, and the result is a walled grid of streets you walk through with the doors at eye level. Some are polished and fresh with flowers. Others have collapsed inwards, and you can see the coffins.

Eva Peron is here, in the Duarte family vault on a side lane, and it is a modest black tomb with a queue in front of it. The map at the gate marks it, along with presidents, admirals and a girl who was reportedly buried alive.

The rest of the day is downhill in every sense. Lunch under the rubber tree outside the gates, then a free national art collection, then the most photographed bookshop in the world.

  1. 09:30

    Recoleta Cemetery

    Historic

    Above ground because the water table is too high for anything else, and elaborate because the families competed. Give it ninety minutes and get properly lost; the far corners are quieter and in better ruin than the main avenue.

  2. 11:30

    La Biela

    Other

    The old cafe on the corner outside the cemetery, shaded by an enormous rubber tree that has needed props under its branches for decades. Tables outside, a long menu, and the best people-watching in Recoleta.

  3. 13:00

    National Fine Arts Museum

    Culture

    The national collection, and free. There is a strong nineteenth century European room with Degas and Rodin among it, but the Argentine painters upstairs are the reason to come, and most visitors skip them.

  4. 15:30

    El Ateneo Grand Splendid Bookstore

    Culture

    A 1919 theatre turned into a bookshop without anybody taking the theatre out: the boxes are reading nooks, the frescoed ceiling is intact, and the stage is a cafe. Browse in Spanish, take the photograph everyone takes, and leave.

With more time: Palermo starts a few blocks north and is where the evening happens. The Japanese garden and the botanical garden are both there if you want green space, and Floralis Generica, a six-petalled steel flower on the plaza by the law faculty, closes at sunset and opens again in the morning. For dinner, Palermo Soho is wall-to-wall restaurants and nothing needs booking on a weeknight.

Day 4 in Buenos Aires

La Boca, the painted street and the stadium

La Boca is where the Genoese dock workers landed, and they built with what the shipyards threw out: corrugated iron, ship's paint, one colour per wall because that was what was left in the tin. The result is the most photographed street in Argentina and a neighbourhood that has stayed poor.

Come in the morning, stay in the few blocks that are policed, and take a taxi in and out rather than walking down from San Telmo. Inside that boundary it is a tourist strip, with tango dancers working for tips and a great deal of merchandise, and it is still worth seeing.

The stadium is four blocks away and it is the other reason people come. Even if you cannot get to a match, the museum and pitch tour explain more about Argentina than most museums manage.

Evening departures from Ezeiza are the norm on the long-haul routes, so a proper lunch afterwards is realistic. Leave three hours for the airport run in the afternoon.

  1. 10:00

    Caminito

    Landmark

    One short cobbled street, painted in blocks of colour, with tango dancers on the corners and stalls the whole way down. Half an hour covers it, and the alleys off it are for looking down rather than walking along.

  2. 11:30

    La Bombonera

    Other

    Boca Juniors play here, Maradona played here, and the stands are so steep and so close that the ground reportedly shakes. Tickets to a match are hard to get without a tour operator; the stadium tour and museum are not.

  3. 13:30

    Last lunch in Puerto Madero or San Telmo

    Eat

    Puerto Madero, the converted dock area on the way back into town, is where the expensive parrillas are and where the red pedestrian bridge crosses the water. San Telmo is cheaper and more interesting. Either is fifteen minutes from La Boca by taxi.

With more time: With a later flight, the walk along the Puerto Madero docks takes in the Puente de la Mujer and the ecological reserve beyond it, which is a genuine piece of wetland five minutes from the financial district and full of birds. Left luggage is easy to arrange at any hotel.

Before you go

Getting in and getting around

Long-haul flights land at Ezeiza, about 35 km south of the centre, and it is an hour in a taxi in ordinary traffic. Domestic flights to Bariloche, Ushuaia, Mendoza, Salta and Iguazu almost all leave from Aeroparque Jorge Newbery instead, which sits on the riverfront a short drive from Recoleta. Two different airports on the same trip is normal here, so check which one your onward flight uses before you book a hotel.

The Subte, the underground, is small but points at most of the places visitors want, and Line A has been running since the 1910s. Buses cover everything the Subte does not and there are hundreds of routes, which is why nobody works them out without an app. Both take a SUBE card, sold at kiosks and station booths and topped up in the same places; one card can pay for several people on a bus or the Subte.

Taxis and ride-hailing are cheap by European or North American standards and worth taking after dark. Traffic on the big avenues is heavy from about 08:00 to 10:00 and again from 17:00 to 20:00.

Money, and paying for things

Argentina's currency has spent years in and out of trouble, and the rules about exchange rates, card surcharges and which foreign payment methods are worth using change faster than any guide can keep up with. Check what the situation is in the month you travel rather than trusting anything written earlier, including this.

What stays true: carry some cash, because small restaurants, market stalls and taxis often prefer it, and expect prices in pesos to look different from one week to the next. Tipping is around ten percent in restaurants and is frequently cash only even where the bill is not.

Eating, and the hours

Nothing about the Argentine day matches the northern European one. Lunch is from about 13:00, dinner rarely before 21:00, and a restaurant that is empty at eight will be full at eleven. Booking is worth it for the well-known parrillas at the weekend and unnecessary on a Tuesday.

The two things worth eating are beef and pizza, and they are not a cliche. A parrilla will sell you bife de chorizo, ojo de bife or asado de tira by the cut, cooked far more slowly than a steakhouse elsewhere would. The pizzerias on Avenida Corrientes are an Italian tradition that went its own way about ninety years ago, with far more cheese than anywhere in Italy would allow. Empanadas are the cheap lunch, and the fillings change by province.

Coffee comes with a small glass of soda water and a biscuit, and nobody will move you on. Sitting in a cafe for two hours is the local sport.

Where to stay

Recoleta is the safe default: quiet, handsome, central enough to walk into the microcentro, and close to Aeroparque for a domestic flight out. Palermo, next door and larger, has the restaurants and the bars and a younger crowd, and Palermo Soho in particular is where most of the new hotels are.

San Telmo puts you in the oldest and most atmospheric part of the city, with cobbles, antique shops and a market at the end of the road, at the cost of scruffier streets after dark. The microcentro empties out at the weekend, when it is offices with nobody in them, so it is the weakest choice for a short stay.

Staying safe

Most visits pass without incident, and the crime that does affect visitors is almost entirely theft: pockets, bags, phones held loosely at a cafe table. Porteños wear their backpacks on their fronts on the Subte, which tells you where the problem is. Carry the day's cash rather than everything you own.

La Boca is the one area that needs a rule rather than general caution. The painted streets around Caminito are policed and busy in daylight and the blocks beyond them are not, so keep to the tourist strip and arrive and leave by taxi. San Telmo and the microcentro thin out sharply in the evening; Recoleta and Palermo stay lively.

Buenos Aires is the rare capital that is better on the fourth day than the first, because it takes that long to stop reading it as a European city with the labels swapped. The proportions are French, the food is Italian, the hours are its own, and the mood swings from grandeur to disrepair in a single block.

Most people carry on from here to Iguazu, Mendoza or Patagonia, and all three go from Aeroparque rather than Ezeiza. Give yourself a night back in the city at the end if the schedule allows it.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is four days enough for Buenos Aires?
It covers the centre, the old south, Recoleta and La Boca comfortably. What four days does not buy is Tigre and the delta, a football match, a proper milonga at two in the morning, or a day at an estancia out in the province. Any of those is a reason to add a night.
Do I need to see a tango show?
The big dinner shows are polished and expensive and have very little to do with how tango is danced in this city. A milonga, where locals dance socially, costs a fraction of it and most run beginner classes at the start of the evening. If you only want the spectacle, the dancers on Caminito and in Plaza Dorrego do it for free.
How much Spanish do I need?
More than in most capital cities. English is common in hotels and in Palermo restaurants and patchy everywhere else. Argentine Spanish will also throw you if you learned it in Spain: ll and y are pronounced sh, vos replaces tu, and the vocabulary is full of Italian.
When is the best time to go?
Spring, from October to early December, and autumn, from March to May. January and February are hot, humid and empty, because the city leaves for the coast. June to August is grey and in the low teens by day, which is mild but not what anybody flies fourteen hours for.
Can I take this plan and change it?
Yes. Copy it into your own trip and move things around, drop the stadium, add the Sunday fair, whatever fits your dates.