Buenos Aires Experience Blog

Palermo Buenos Aires is the largest barrio in the north of the Buenos Aires City.

Palermo divides into a grand family of neighborhoods for smashing Buenos Aires walking tours.

Each of Palermo’s neighborhoods have accepted, but unofficial titles that demonstrate their unique characteristics and charm.

Palermo has an amazing history, its historical importance signposted by many architectural gems and super monuments, and its many important residents of yesteryear.

Learn about General Rosas, widely regarded as a ‘bloody dictator’ of Buenos Aires in the early to mid-nineteenth century. As leader of the Holy Federation he ruled Buenos Aires with a ‘puritanical fist’ and made Palermo parks his own private fiefdom; and Eva Duarte de Peron, who upset Botanico’s rich residents by appropriating a mansion in 1948 to house unmarried mothers, now the Museo Eva Peron.  Borges, Argentina’s literary giant and Che Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary who both lived in the barrio.

Some of Palermo’s neighborhoods preserve older European style architecture and the aristocratic origins of the barrio. Whilst others are fashionable inventions of new upscale apartment blocks, trendy restaurants, bars, nightclubs and boutiques.

Palermo is truly a remarkable barrio with something for every tourist, every budget and every taste.

This Palermo Buenos Aires guide takes our clients on a Buenos Aires walking tour that highlights Palermo’s best sightseeing, whilst telling its story that starts in the 1600s!

We accomplish our main Palermo tour in just one day. This tour is not for the faint hearted, it comprises of a full day walking with stops for lunch at a restaurant or a picnic in the park and an early evening coffee at the end of the tour.

Clients who want to visit museums and galleries or those with children who want to see the Planetarium and Zoo can request personalized tours or request a guide for two to three days.

We start our walking tour on Palermo’s northeastern boundary at Palermo Chico (small or ‘exclusive’ Palermo) found just north of Recoleta on the eastern side of Libertador Avenue.

Within Palermo Chico, across Figueroa Alcorta Avenue and between San Martín de Tours and Tagle Streets, is Barrio Parque, a salubrious residential area adorned with grand palacetas (small mansions) and embassies on winding lanes shaded by a canopy of indigenous trees. Carlos Thays, the French architect and landscaper who settled in Argentina in the latter part of the nineteenth century, designed Barrio Parque.

Just one of its landmark mansions is the Instituto Nacional Sanmartiniano found at Plaza Grand Bourg, which until recently held national treasures telling the rather sad story of Argentina’s most important national hero, Jose San Martin.

The house is a larger reproduction of the San Martin’s Boulogne Sur Mar home in France, where the ‘father of Argentina’ lived and died whilst living in self-imposed exile.

Our Argentine friends tell us that no good deed goes unpunished in Argentina and San Martin, a great soldier who fought for independence from Spain, eventually gave up on the independent states of the Rio del la Plata (History of Argentina) because infighting and divisive politics were not part of his vision.  The national treasures of San Martin have since moved to Museo Historic Nacional in San Telmo.

This Palermo neighborhood can take a few hours or a day sightseeing with important galleries and museums to explore:

Museo de Motivos Argentinos José Hernández is dedicated to exhibiting ‘local’ woodcarving, silverware, and textiles.  The mission of the Jose Hernandez Museum is to collect, document, preserve and promote the artistic heritage of Argentina.

When leaving Palermo Chico and Barrio Parque, at the Museo de Motivos Argentinos Jose Hernandez we continue north across Libertador Avenue to Tres de Febrero Park:

Tres de Febrero Park
Avenida del Libertador and Avenida Sarmiento
http://buenosaires.gov.ar/areas/med_ambiente/parque_3_de_febrero/rosedal/

Once the estate of Juan Manuel de Rosas, Tres de Febrero Park was designed by French landscape architect  Carlos Thays, and  is the perfect location for sunbathing, people watching and walking. Visitors can rent a pedal boat, test their endurance on a mile-long running track that circles the gardens or explore the Museo Sívori art museum.   Also home to Planetario Galileo Galilei, the Planetarium, which has been a popular attraction for both kids and adults since opening in the late 1960’s. There is also a Rose garden (Rosedale), the Jardin des los Poetas, with fountain and bust of Argentina’s literary giants and this park adjoins the Jardín Japonés:

Jardín Japonés
2966 Casares
mailto:informes@jardinjapones.org.ar
http://www.jardinjapones.org.ar/

Inaugurated in 1967 by Japanese immigrants, this 5-acre garden was designed by famed landscape artist Yasuo Onomata to resemble the surroundings of a Zen temple. The lush plant life includes over 150 different species, many brought directly from Japan.  The restaurant inside offers contemporary Japnanese cuisine and is very good.

If you carry on up Libertador Avenue and turn left at the Monumento a los Espanoles on to Sarmiento Avenue, you will find yourself walking alongside Buenos Aires City’s zoo:

Jardín Zoológico
Avenida Las Heras and Avenida Sarmiento
http://www.zoobuenosaires.com.ar
Founded in 1874, the Zoo Garden still stands as one of the city’s most gently preserved green spaces. The zoo is home to 2,500 animals belonging to 350 different species. Added in 1988 was an aquarium and a climate controlled enclosure for a penguin colony.

When you reach Plaza Italia to your left is another old neighborhood as known as “Botanico” to the locals, because it takes its name from Jardin Botanico Carlos Thays.

The Botanico neighborhood was very wealthy in the past with small mansions (palacetes). The locals were not pleased when Eva Duarte de Peron took possession of one mansion to create a home for single mothers in 1948, her mansion now home to Museo Eva Peron at Lafinur 2988.  The Eva Peron Museum is a positive, if not always accurate depiction of Argentina’s most iconic heroine of the working classes.

Jardin Botanico Carlos Thays

Botanical Gardens
Av. Las Heras at Plaza Italia

The Botanical Gardens, renamed Carlos Thays after his death in August 1937 cover 15 acres of lush fertile ground just north of Buenos Aires’ city centre not too far from the Rio de la Plata. In addition to 7000 species of plants from all over the world, the gardens are dotted with statues (mostly of nudes) and fountains. Botanical Gardens are an ideal place to take respite from the city. Besides discovering beautiful flora, the garden is the perfect setting for an afternoon picnic or evening stroll. There is a main house with tourist information and guides.

Two areas in particular have changed beyond recognition over the ten to fifteen years, Palermo Soho part of Palermo Viejo and Las Cañitas, at the far north of the barrio next to Palermo Hollywood on the border of Belgrano.

Palermo Viejo and Las Cañitas are hugely successful areas if urban regeneration and their gentrifications now inspire projects throughout the City.

Starting a Plaza Italia we walk northwest up Borges Street to Palermo Viejo (old Palermo) to Plaza Serrano, also known as Plaza Cortazar.

This is the city’s most fashionable neighborhood. Palermo Viejo is a major shopping, partying and restaurant nucleus with stylish boutiques and major brand name shops, some of Buenos Aires most fantastic restaurants and most certainly the best bars and nightclubs in the city of Buenos Aires are found in Palermo.

Palermo Viejo buzzes with shoppers during the day and the trendy party-goers at night.  This is a very busy area, particularly at Plaza Serrano, which more recently feels a little like a tourist trap, the bars are great for a drink, but we have never had good food in any of the restaurants on the square.

A train track subdivides Palermo Viejo. The south side is Soho and the north side Hollywood or south of Juan B Justo Avenue is Palermo Soho and north of the avenue is Palermo Hollywood.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote about this neighborhood in his poem, ‘The mythical foundation of Buenos Aires’.  Borges lived at Jose Luis Borges 2135, formerly known as Serrano Street. Not too long ago, Palermo Viejo was run down and a haven for transvestite prostitutes who moved to Palermo Park after dark.

Typical Mediterranean style square(ish), narrow, low-rise housing predominates in Palermo Viejo from the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There are also much older architectural gems in French, Italian and English styles, but we save architecture for another time. The houses in old Palermo are casa chorizos or sausage houses, with narrow fronts.  They are long, going back for many meters and many conceal courtyards.

Palermo Viejo is also scattered with picturesque mews or pasejes, with more quaint houses and shops to explore creating an almost village feel to the area that has made it a big favorite for tourists sightseeing and living.

We tend to leave Palermo Hollywood for nighttimes excursions, the area is more residential with more sausage houses and modern apartment block terraces of every description and type, usually one or two ’sausage size houses’ at the front, with low-rise houses tucked between the blocks sometimes looking a little out of place.

The area is named Hollywood because it was the home of TV and movie-making, although we are not so sure that is still the case and if it is, we have not found too many studios in the area.

Palermo Hollywood has some great restaurants and resto-bars that seem ‘a little more adult’ and a little less touristy than their Soho counterparts do – Soho is definitely a favorite of twenty-something American crowd and the twenty-something Argentines who seek out their company.

If you are considering staying in Palermo, we think Palermo Soho can be too busy and too noisy for some travelers who want peace and quiet after they sightsee or party and recommend Palermo Hollywood and wider Palermo as the more residential and less commercial of the two.

Another neighborhood that tourists tend to choose is Palermo’s Las Cañitas, next to Hollywood and now overlapping parts of Belgrano.

Las Canitas has many upscale modern apartment blocks and is close to Palermo’s polo fields and the Palermo’s home of horse racing the Hippodrome.  There are many good restaurants and some great late night bars in Las Canitas that attract a slightly older than the ‘twenty-something’ crowd and many English speaking middle class Argentines.

Las Cañitas now competes with Palermo Viejo to capture the party crowd and diners, it is also a neighborhood that more and more tourists choose to Buenos Aires Stay.

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