Argentina Tours & Travel | The Neighborhoods of Buenos Aires: La Boca
On the south side of town, bordering Puerto Madero and San Telmo to the north, you'll find Buenos Aires' most colorful and most photographed area of the city, the waterfront working class neighborhood of La Boca. It is here where waves of immigrants disembarked, where many Spanish and Italian newcomers made their first home, and where tango was born. Of all neighborhoods to visit on Argentina tours, La Boca is a must-see.
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Though touristy, the neighborhood is filled with welcoming sidewalk cafes, tango salons and lively street culture, making it a stop for just about everyone on travel to Argentina. While La Boca is a popular place to see a tango show, it is not a neighborhood to tour unaccompanied at night. Come here for a leisurely sidewalk lunch where you can take in all the action, photograph historic Buenos Aires, and enjoy the street-dancers.
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The works of popular Argentine painter, Benito Quinquela Martin, are housed in the Museo de Bellas Artes de La Boca where he lived and painted his port scenes the neighborhood. After visiting this neighborhood on your Argentina tours, you can tell friends you came within a few blocks of La Bombonera Stadium, home of La Boca Juniors, the team of the illustrious Diego Maradona.
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The neighborhood's most famous sight to see on Argentina tours is its colorful street named after a famous tango song, El Caminito. Just one block long, the brightly colored metal facades of the buildings are the backdrop for the neighborhood's street fair, predominated by inexpensively priced clothing, crafts and paintings, many with tango themes. The second-story balconies of some of the buildings hold three dimensional sculptures of human figures (including Eva and Juan Peron) as though ghosts of a bygone era. It is said that these buildings first became colorful when immigrants, too poor to buy their own paint, made do with the leftovers from their jobs on the docks in whatever hues were available. The pleasing mishmash of paint colors has proven a popular sight for those who travel to Argentina, and so the tradition continues.
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For a historic overview of the city, and stops in La Boca at El Caminito, you may wish to consider adding Southern Explorations' Four Balconies Tour Extension to your Argentina tours.
