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Monumento al General Carlos M de Alvear
Created by French sculptor Emile Antoine Bourdelle, this monument is one of the city's finest. General Alvear sits atop a horse with four bronze figures below him representing strength, eloquence, victory and freedom.
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Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA)
If there's one art museum you don't want to miss, MALBA is it. Opened in 2001 and housing the private collection of Argentine multimillionaire Eduardo Costantini, MALBA is home to exceptional works by Latin American greats including Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and Argentines Antonio Berni, Xul Solar and Emilio Pettoruti. Temporary exhibits are almost always exceptional as well.
Read more about Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA)
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Museo de Arte Moderno
Set in a former tobacco factory, this stunning and highly underrated modern and contemporary art museum has a quality collection of Argentine and Latin American art, some work by big international names such as Picasso, Matisse, Dali, Kandinsky, Delauny and Mondrian, as well as rotating exhibitions of art, photography, and experimental film and video.
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Museo de Arte Popular José Hernandez
This wonderful small museum has a permanent collection of indigenous Argentine crafts and popular arts, including colorful textiles, decorative masks, and Carnaval costumes.
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Museo de Artes Plásticas Eduardo Sívori
Situated within our favorite Buenos Aires park, this modern art museum has an outstanding collection of paintings and sculptures by over 100 of Argentina's best artists. It's quite a range of work, both in quality and quantity, and well worth a visit before a saunter through the nearby Rosedal rose garden in Parque de 3 Febrero.
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Museo de Bellas Artes de la Boca Benito Quinquela Martín
Argentine painter Benito Quinquela Martín (1890-1977) lived and worked in this enormous waterfront building; it's now a fascinating museum housing an outstanding collection of his haunting paintings of ships and dockworkers, along with works by other Boca artists. Note that there's no English translation on the signage.
Read more about Museo de Bellas Artes de la Boca Benito Quinquela Martín
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Museo de la Ciudad
This intriguing museum explores the relationships between the built environment and social life of the city through stunning old photographs, architectural plans, drawings and details, antique furniture and other fascinating artifacts.
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Museo de la Immigracion
This engaging museum uses old photographs, films and mementoes to tell the stories of the many thousands of European immigrants who arrived in BA in the late 1880s.
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Museo de la Pasión Boquense
No visit to La Boca is complete without visiting this slick museum and shrine to the Boca Juniors football club. A highlight is stepping inside a giant soccer ball, where a 360-degree movie screen transports you into a crowd-filled stadium - obviously not as good as the real thing, but close enough.
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Museo Evita
Saint or tyrant, this is museum is all about Argentina's adoration of Eva (Evita) Perón. It's a highly educational walking tour through her life, with nice touches such as a video montage set to tango electrónica - an unexpected break after admiring all her fabulous gowns. Information is available in English.
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Museo Fragata Sarmiento
This elegant former naval ship sailed around the world 40 times between 1899 and 1938 before serving as a training school for Argentina's navy. While there's some interesting nautical paraphernalia on board, porteños prefer to laze about on the deck in the sunshine.
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Museo Histórico Nacional
This intimate museum is housed in a splendid mansion that belonged to Gregorio Lezama who established the verdant gardens that are now Parque Lezama. It provides a great introduction to Argentina's history. Different rooms take visitors from 'discovery' through invasions, revolution and independence to modern presidencies, illustrated with wonderful paintings by Argentine masters, along with furniture, clothes, weapons, and other artifacts.
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Museo Municipal de Arte Hispanoamericano Isaac Fernández Blanco
This engaging museum in an elegant neo-colonial mansion displays an exceptional collection of colonial art including paintings, Jesuit statuary, costumes, furniture, colonial silverware, and antiques. It's set in lovely landscaped gardens that offer a wonderful sanctuary from the bustling city.
Read more about Museo Municipal de Arte Hispanoamericano Isaac Fernández Blanco
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Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo
Housed in the opulent Beaux-Arts mansion Palacio Errázuriz (1911-17), which once belonged to Chilean aristocrats, this wonderful museum displays some 4000 pieces of decorative art, from Louis XIV furniture to Renaissance paintings.
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Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
Argentina's most important fine-arts museum is home to an outstanding and enormous collection of 19th- and 20th-century Argentine art, as well as works by European masters such as Renoir, Rodin, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Rembrandt and Van Gogh. Art-lovers could easily allow a day here.
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Museo Xul Solar
This stunning museum shows the fantastic work of painter, musician, traveler, and inventor Alejandro Xul Solar (1887-1963), a leading figure of the Latin American avant-garde. A friend of Borges, Solar had wide-ranging interests - philosophy, astrology, indigenous cultures, ethnography, anthropology, theology, and mysticism - and his work, influenced by expressionism, symbolism, cubism and futurism, mirrors those interests.
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Obelisco
It's impossible to imagine BA without the Obelisco. Towering 68m (223ft) above the oval Plaza de la República, it was inaugurated in 1936, on the 400th anniversary of the first Spanish settlement on the Río de la Plata. After major soccer victories, fans transform the intersection into a celebration ground.
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Palacio Barolo
In 1919 Italian cotton tycoon Luis Barolo commissioned architect Mario Palanti to build an architectural tribute to Dante's Divine Comedy . At 100m beautiful Palacio Barolo was then Latin America's highest building. Its height referenced the Divine Comedy 's 100 songs, its 22 floors represented the number of verses per song, while its structure was divided into Hell, Purgatory and Heaven.
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Palacio de Justicia
Occupying an entire city block overlooking leafy Plaza Lavalle, this beautiful beaux-arts structure is home to the Supreme Courts, and was built in stages between 1904 and 1949.
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Palacio de las Aguas Corrientes
This spectacular building, inaugurated in 1894, is decorated with hundreds of thousands of glazed terracotta tiles. Home of the city's now privatized waterworks, 12 giant tanks once filled the building, distributing water to the city. A small museum inside has a fascinating collection of pretty tiles and faucets, and antique toilets and urinals.
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Palacio del Congreso
The colossal greystone Palacio del Congreso, Argentina's national House of Congress, overlooks Plaza del Congreso. Modeled on the Capitol in Washington, DC and completed in 1906, it's topped by an enormous 85m dome and splendid statuary. There are free tours of the Senate in English.
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Parque 3 de Febrero
Also known as Bosques de Palermo, or Palermo Park, this sprawling green space actually consists of several beautiful parks with small lakes, ponds, pretty bridges, and the Rosedal rose garden, making it a joy to explore. At night, however, Av de la Infanta Isabel becomes BA's finest transvestite 'red light' zone.
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Parque Lezama
The monuments in this scruffy neighborhood park (where Mendoza founded Buenos Aires in 1536) may be locked behind bars, but its vitality is evident at this park, with its regular chess and card players, local girls practising flag-waving routines, book-readers sucking on bombillas (straws for drinking mate ), and obligatory kissing couples. The weekend market sees La Boca's locals trading second-hand clothes.
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Plaza de Mayo
This plaza was founded in 1580 as the city's first central plaza - its name commemorates the May Revolution (1810) that began the process of independence from Spain. It's the most symbolically important spot in the city, flanked by the Casa Rosada, the Catedral Metropolitana and several other important buildings. In the center stands the Pirámide de Mayo, a small obelisk commemorating the first anniversary of BA's independence from Spain.
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Plaza del Congreso
Lively Plaza del Congreso is home to a miniscule amusement park, kid's playground, dog walkers, cooing pigeons and families feeding them, Rodin's statue The Thinker, and the splendid Monumento a los Dos Congresos. Honoring the congresses of 1810 in Buenos Aires and 1816 in Tucumán, which led to Argentine independence, its enormous steps symbolize the high Andes, while the fountain represents the Atlantic Ocean.
