Buenos Aires Overview

Buenos Aires is a city reborn. Eight years after Argentina declared the largest foreign debt default in history, the city is reinventing itself as Latin America’s trendiest and most exciting capital. That sucking, whooshing sound you hear is the rush of tourists heading to the Argentine metropolis. As many will explain, Buenos Aires is a cosmopolitan city, and that cosmopolitanism plays out in ways both delicious and downright confusing. It’s a city where high-heeled fashionistas and broken down garbage drivers inhabit the same fifty-year-old streets, where incessant arrays of protesters in front of the Casa Rosada mix with innumerable German expats in new bars carved out of old, luxurious townhouses, and where trendy boutiques in Palermo Soho get busy only after the bakery next door has sold its daily fresh bread. As it has transitioned from one of the most expensive cities in Latin America to one of the cheapest, it’s become a magnet for bohemians and backpackers without losing that feel that makes it one of the world’s most exciting cities.

Metro Area Population: 13,044,800.
As Percent Of Argentina’S Population: Over 40%.
Total Area: 4758 sq. km.
Largest Barrio: Palermo, at 17.4 sq. km. Also the most populous, with 252,312 people.
Religious Affiliation: Roman Catholic 92%.
Practicing Roman Catholics: Under 20%.
Population Below Poverty Line: 23.4%.
Number Of Lanes In Avenida De Julio: A whopping 16. Don’t forget to look both ways before crossing.
Color Of The Río De La Plata: Brown. Very brown.
Annual Meat Consumption Per Capita: 68kg.
Number Of Traffic Deaths Annually: 7500.
Approximate Number Of Argentine Tourist Industry Jobs: 2,000,000.
Number Of Soccer Teams: Over 24, the highest concentration of soccer teams in any one city in the world.
Percent Of Households That Drink Mate: 92%.
Number Of World Cup Titles: 2 (1978 and 1986).

That feel springs up from a cultural legacy at once expansive and unique. Between the sweaty milongas of San Telmo and the cheap leather wallets and knock-off jerseys on Calle Florida, there’s a life in Buenos Aires that’s all its own. And though chic bohemian artists and hard-drinking expatriates own more than their fair share of the city, the bombardment of tourists and immigrants in the last half decade has done nothing but reinforce a culture that’s based on jumbled ethnicities in the first place. Maybe, even, it’s that mixed cultural legacy—the legacy that makes Argentine pizza the best in the world and Argentine fútbol (read: soccer) fans some of the craziest—that makes travel here so compelling. To the visitor, it’s a pseudo-European city of cheap Malbec and larger-than-reasonable steaks. It’s also an odd-couple pairing of Paris or Italy, complete with ice cream-and-espresso modernity, with tall white ancestry and a distinctly South American flair—from ad-hoc construction to suicidal no-lane driving and large, pink government buildings that could only be found in the subtropics, or perhaps a Floridian retirement community. To the porteño, it’s a proud capital brought to its knees by 2001’s unprecedented economic disaster. But surrounding the pomp and poverty of it all is a tremendous Argentine culture, forged in the bowls of mate gourds and in art galleries and in divebars—a culture both slow-paced and passionate, created of a people of strong and sometimes strangely conservative opinions—that makes Buenos Aires a city of captivating complexity and irresistible beauty.

When To Go

The first thing to know—and we hope you’ve already realized this; if you haven’t, you might want to sit down—is that Buenos Aires is in the Southern Hemisphere. Hence, the seasons are the reverse ...more

Neighborhood Overviews

Buenos Aires proper is divided into a whopping 48 neighborhoods, known as barrios. Some, such as San Telmo (pop. 26,000), are relatively tiny, while others, like Palermo (pop. 252,000), are truly epic ...more