Traveling in Buenos Aires: Navigating through the Neighborhoods of the City

Cross the street and everything changes. Buenos Aires, more than most cities of a comparable size, gives you the feeling of a patchwork quilt city, a city that is defined by its barrios (barrios).

If you ask a porteño, one of the Buenos Aires residents, where he is from, he will not tell you Buenos Aires, he will give you the name of his neighborhood. And if you ask him which neighborhood is the best, any self-respecting porteño will tell you that it is his neighborhood.

It is best to take this advice lightly and try a handful.

Neighborhoods commonly visited by tourists and travelers include, in descending order of popularity:

1) Collected. Buenos Aires’ equivalent to New York’s Upper East Side or London’s Knightsbridge. Elegant, ornate and elegant. A quick list of things to see and do includes the cemetery, the lobbies of five-star hotels (of which the Alvear is the glitziest), and the shops on Avenida Santa Fe.

2) Palermo. Known for its parks as well as its restaurants, bars and small colorful shops. When Palermo is mentioned as the best place in Buenos Aires to go out, they are probably referring to Palermo Viejo and Palermo Hollywood (two micro-neighborhoods). They’re the trendiest places to see in BA right now, where you can partake in the city’s crazy nightlife that doesn’t even start to slow down until the sun has already risen. (A good night in Buenos Aires must end with breakfast).

3) Center (Microcenter). This is where Buenos Aires suits go on a business day. It is the center of the nation’s economy, a place of high-rise office buildings, narrow, crowded streets, and exhaust fumes. For the tourist with no commercial concerns, it’s almost completely uninteresting (although you wouldn’t know it for the sheer number of people who flock there). Towards San Telmo, in the oldest part of the center, there are places to visit, however: the Plaza de Mayo, the Casada Rosada (the “Casa Rosada”, the Buenos Aires equivalent of the White House) and the Manzana de Las Luces are worth visiting. a visit.

4) San Telmo. A neighborhood of cobbled streets, antique shops and mansions from the colonial zone. In the early days of Buenos Aires, the Spanish and upper-class Creoles settled in this area and built grandiose buildings with interior patios. When those wealthy citizens fled San Telmo and left for Recoleta to escape the cholera epidemics at the end of the 19th century, the mansions were abandoned to illegal squatters and San Telmo became the center of Buenos Aires bohemia. Recently, the interest of visitors, both foreign and Argentine, has brought gentrification to the neighborhood. This means that security, once a sore point, has improved, but prices have also skyrocketed.

5) However, one place where it is still better to watch your wallet is La Boca. In fact, it is really only advisable to visit the tourist area of ​​El Caminito where the Argentine Federal Police have been stationed to watch your back. This little street, with its brightly colored houses, has almost been visited to death. Still, no visit to Buenos Aires is complete without a visit to the legendary, brightly colored street. On game days, the La Boca football stadium is another of the main reasons to visit the neighborhood.

However, when you come to Buenos Aires, do yourself a favor and try to break away from the established tourist routines, even for a while. Some recommendations for less-visited neighborhoods, where your fellow citizens and fellow travelers are less likely to tag along, include:

The Cañitas in Belgrano. Restaurants, restaurants and eateries galore (a stone’s throw from Palermo).

Almagro. What used to be Sant Telmo, Almagro continues to be: bohemian. Check newspaper listings for tango concerts, independent theater, and other events in the area. Meanwhile, Las Violetas cafe, on the corner of Avenida Rivadavia and Calle Medrano, is among the most beautifully restored historic cafes in the city.

A peripheral neighborhood where the city’s butchers still ply their trade, Mataderos is also a find, not so much for the neighborhood itself, but for the Sunday afternoon markets that take place in the neighborhood’s main square. This market should not be confused with the markets of San Telmo or Recoleta. It’s bigger, better, with a greater variety of authentic artisan products: leather and silver, among others. In the spring and summer months, gauchos from the nearby countryside also hold rodeo displays at the market.