Buenos Aires wears its history in layers: colonial brick under San Telmo floors, a Haussmannian boulevard laid in 1894, a cemetery of marble oligarchs, and monuments to the 30,000 disappeared. Three days follow the city from 1580 to 1983.
The Jesuit block begun in 1662: the Iglesia San Ignacio (oldest surviving church in the city), colonial cloisters, and the brick tunnels under Perú 272. Later held the first university and the national Congress. Guided visits only.
An 1830 mansion on Defensa 755, excavated for three decades to expose the vaulted brick tunnels of the Tercero del Sur stream, cisterns, and the floors of the conventillo that housed immigrant families after the 1871 yellow fever exodus.
The last colonial building on Plaza de Mayo, where the junta of 25 May 1810 deposed the viceroy. Two original arcades survive; inside are the 1806–07 British invasion trophies, the cabildo cell and colonial-era printing presses.
Built 1752–1852 over the adobe original of 1580, a Roman temple façade grafted onto a colonial nave. The right transept holds José de San Martín's black marble mausoleum, watched by Granaderos in 1812 uniform; the crypt shows earlier foundations.
Four concrete walls cut into the Río de la Plata bank carry 8.700 engraved names of those disappeared and murdered 1969–1983, with blank plaques left for those still unidentified. Opened 2007 on the river used for the death flights.
A curved wall of 649 names of Argentines killed in the 1982 South Atlantic war, guarded around the clock, facing the 1916 British-built clock tower — renamed from Torre de los Ingleses after the conflict. Guard change on the hour.
Mario Palanti's 1923 tower on Avenida de Mayo, 100 m for the 100 cantos of Dante's Commedia: hell in the basement arcade, purgatory in the offices, the lighthouse of paradise on top. Was South America's tallest building until 1935.
The city's political stage since 1580: the 1811 obelisk marking the revolution's first anniversary, the white headscarves of the Madres painted around it in 2005, and the balcony from which Perón spoke on 17 October 1945.
Four hectares of marble streets laid out in 1822 on a Recollect friars' orchard: 4.700 vaults holding presidents, Sarmiento, Rosas's daughter and Eva Perón, whose body reached the Duarte tomb only in 1976 after 22 years abroad.
A 1923 Palermo mansion that Eva Perón's foundation ran as a shelter for single mothers, now holding her dresses, her Fundación ration stamps and 1951 film of the renunciamiento — the rally where she declined the vice-presidency.
In an 1846 house on Parque Lezama, where legend puts Pedro de Mendoza's 1536 first founding. Holds San Martín's sabre replica, Rosas-era federalist relics and Cándido López's paintings of the Paraguayan War, made with his surviving hand.
Open since 1858 at Avenida de Mayo 829, with the original Thonet chairs, marble tables and the basement where the Peña Agrupación de Gente de Arte met. Borges, Gardel and Federico García Lorca all sat here; the wax figures mark their table.