15 of the most incredible experiences in Buenos Aires

16.08.2024 - 13:31 / lonelyplanet.com

Aug 16, 2024 • 8 min read

Famed for food, fun and fleet-footed dancers, Argentina's capital has evolved into one of the most talked-about travel destinations on the planet. What makes Buenos Aires so much fun? It's partly the energy and lust for life, best experienced in the city's tango-tastic milongas (dance halls). But it's also the city's wealth of experiences, from top-flight decadence to urban, gritty excitement.

For every top-flight art museum, there's a backstreet painted with flamboyant street art, and for every group of cocktail-sipping trendsetters, there’s a cluster of old-timers gathered around a radio, tapping a toe to the tunes of Carlos Gardel.

The city boasts an incredible number of thing to see and do – and much of it is free (or very budget-friendly), leaving you with more money to spend on lavish steak dinners washed down with glasses of robust Mendoza red. Don’t miss these top Buenos Aires experiences.

You'll meet centuries worth of great porteños at the spectacular Cementerio de la Recoleta, a necropolis ornate enough to rival Père Lachaise in Paris or the moss-cloaked cities of the dead in New Orleans. This intriguing cemetery is a maze of narrow passageways lined with crumbling marble statuary and ornate mausoleums in architectural styles ranging from art nouveau to neo-Gothic.

Get lost in the alleyways to discover cherubs in stone relief, stained-glass windows edged with cobwebs, marble angels and bittersweet poetry etched into granite.

In Buenos Aires, fútbol is not just a game – it's a way of life. The nation's favorite pastime inspires near-religious passion in locals, clearing the city streets and sending spectators into fits of ecstasy and anguish as they huddle around TV screens or brave the explosive stadium crowds.

Seeing a game at La Bombonera, the famed stadium of Club Atlético Boca Juniors, is one of the world's top spectator sports experiences, especially if you manage to catch the superclasico match against rival team River Plate.

Planning tip: Tickets are hard to come by – it's best to use a travel agent.

The barrio of San Telmo exudes faded grandeur and bohemian spirit. The neighborhood's elegant belle-époque architecture and crumbling villas are throwbacks to the district’s 19th-century heyday. Before yellow fever and cholera sent the beau monde fleeing for higher ground, aristocratic Spanish families traversed these atmospheric cobblestone streets in horse-drawn carriages.

After the epidemic, San Telmo’s poor immigrants turned the abandoned mansions into makeshift conventillos (tenement housing).

Tango music developed, in part, amid the melancholy of homesickness and the merging of musical traditions in the district's plazas and patios. Today, the pretty barrio still