Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires Has More Psychoanalysts Per Capita Than Any Other City on Earth – and This Is Not a Metaphor

This is a documented fact. Buenos Aires has been arguing with itself about who it is for two hundred years: an immigrant city that half-convinced itself it was European, a cultural capital whose weight kept collapsing under economic crisis, a place where intensity, melancholy, and extraordinary generosity are all available at the same table. The Portenos are frequently psychoanalysed, often glamorous, and consistently generous with strangers who make the effort to speak some Spanish.

Look at the city quickly and it resembles Paris transported to the River Plate: mansard roofs, wrought-iron balconies, plane-lined boulevards, Beaux-Arts opera houses. Stay a few days and the European veneer gives way to something entirely Argentine: long lunches drifting into dinners drifting into tango milongas drifting into 4am beef-and-Malbec conversations. The subway opened in 1913 – the first in the Southern Hemisphere – funded by the same beef-and-wheat export boom that rebuilt the city’s grand avenues in the late 19th century.

Essential Sights

Plaza de Mayo is the political heart: the pink Casa Rosada (Presidential Palace) where Evita, Peron, and every subsequent president have addressed the nation; the Cabildo (colonial town hall); the Metropolitan Cathedral where Pope Francis served as archbishop before his election in 2013 and where Jose de San Martin is buried under an honour guard. Every Thursday since 1977, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have walked the square with photographs of their disappeared children. The worn white scarves painted on the cobbles are their permanent memorial.

Recoleta Cemetery is a grid of narrow streets lined with 4,700 family mausoleums in every style from Art Nouveau to neo-Baroque. Evita’s family tomb is the most visited. The Teatro Colon is one of the world’s five great opera houses by acoustic and architectural standards; guided tours run in the mornings and the interior is worth seeing regardless of whether you attend a performance.

El Ateneo Grand Splendid, a 1919 theatre converted into a bookshop with frescoed dome and gilded balconies overlooking shelves of books, is one of those places that turns out to be exactly as good as the photographs suggest.

Eating and Drinking

Asado – the Argentine grill – involves provoleta, chinchulines, morcilla, chorizo, mollejas, and the full sequence of beef cuts, eaten with chimichurri and Malbec from Mendoza. A parrilla in a working-class barrio like Mataderos runs at local prices; the same food in Palermo costs more and is often less interesting. Argentine artisanal ice cream is among the world’s best; dulce de leche granizado is the national flavour and you should try it before you try anything else.

Mate – yerba mate infusion drunk through a metal bombilla out of a hollow gourd, shared in circles – is offered as a gesture of friendship. Accept it.

Tango

Take a beginner class in the afternoon and visit a milonga later that night. Salon Canning, La Catedral, and La Viruta are established milongas where the real practice happens. A tango show at venues like Rojo Tango is polished and beautiful; a milonga is where you see it as it actually is – a living social practice rather than a performance.

Practical Notes

The Argentine peso remains volatile; bring US dollars in cash (crisp, unfolded bills) and exchange at reputable casas de cambio. Ask your hotel for current guidance on rates, as the gap between official and market rates has historically been significant. Spring (September through November) and autumn (March through May) are the best seasons. Dinner at 10pm and nightlife starting at 2am are genuinely how the city works – shift your clock on arrival rather than fighting it.