Heart of Colonial Buenos Aires

Name: Heart of Colonial Buenos Aires
Brand: VoiceMap
SKU: 66
Price: 2.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.3 (27 reviews)
Author: Derek

(27 reviews)

Buenos Aires audio tour: Heart of Colonial Buenos Aires

This is a 0.9mi walking tour

It takes an average of 30 mins to complete.

Buenos Aires

Argentina

$2.99

Access all 21 locations offline with the VoiceMap app

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About the Tour

Travel five hundred years in the span of just a few blocks through the historic center of Buenos Aires. Follow the city's transformation from a remote Spanish colonial outpost to the cosmopolitan capital of an independent nation.

Tour Producer

Derek Sandhaus

1 tour

Derek Sandhaus is an American writer. He is the author of three books, most recently Baijiu: The Essential Guide to Chinese Spirits (Penguin, 2014). His writing has appeared in magazines, anthologies and literary journals. He is also the editor of numerous of titles, including the memoirs of controversial sinologist Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, Décadence Mandchoue (Earnshaw, 2011). He lives in Buenos Aires with his wife and dog.

Preview Location

Location 1

Cabildo

You are standing at the southwest corner of the Plaza de Mayo, the beginning and the end of our tour.

Conquistadors from the Iberian Peninsula were first drawn to Argentina in the early 16th century. They came seeking wealth and conquest, but found neither. In fact, when P... You are standing at the southwest corner of the Plaza de Mayo, the beginning and the end of our tour.

Conquistadors from the Iberian Peninsula were first drawn to Argentina in the early 16th century. They came seeking wealth and conquest, but found neither. In fact, when Portuguese explorer Juan Diáz de Soliz first landed in this area, his outfit was attacked and possibly ingested by the local Querandí tribe. The name they gave to the local waterway, the Rio de la Plata or River of Silver, was all they left behind.

No silver was ever discovered here, but rumors of treasure persisted and in 1535 Spain sent a larger fleet to the Rio de la Plata under the command of Pedro de Mendoza. They landed a couple miles south of here. Already short of food, they were besieged by the Querandí and within a year and a half, the contingent of sixteen hundred had been reduced to six hundred. The survivors fled north and founded Asunción in what is now Paraguay. Again, all they left behind was a name: Ciudad de la Santísma Trinidad y Puerto de Santa María de Buen Ayre, a mouthful that was thankfully shortened to Buenos Aires.

In 1580 the Governor of Asunción, Juan de Garay, returned to the Rio de la Plata with only sixty-six men and achieved a lasting settlement. The square in which you are now standing is where they landed and built their city.

Hi, I’m author Derek Sandhaus. In the time that I’ve spent living in and writing about Buenos Aires, I have been impressed with the richness of this city’s culture and the way in which its past, no matter how well hidden, rarely wanders far from the present. Today we’re going to take a stroll through the historic center of Buenos Aires. What’s great about this neighborhood is that in a span of just a few blocks, you can cover about five hundred years of history. On today’s walk we will primarily look at the country’s early Spanish colonial history and the factors that lead to Argentine Independence, but we will also look at how that history has shaped more recent events.

After Juan de Garay came to Buenos Aires, he laid out the city along the model prescribed by Spanish colonial law. First they built this central square. On the opposite end of it, where you see the grand pink presidential palace, stood a fortress that overlooked the Rio de la Plata. And here, on this side, we see the other two necessities of a Spanish-American settlement: a church and a cabildo.

The Cabildo is the white two-story building with arches and a tower just across the street from you. In colonial times the Cabildo served a similar function to a town hall, with a legislative assembly and jail.

Spanish colonial society relied on a rigid social and racial hierarchy and members of the Cabildo’s council were drawn exclusively from the white landholding classes. At first members were chosen by election, but later one could purchase an appointment. This meant that the body tended to serve the narrow commercial needs of local oligarchs, who sometimes found themselves at odds with Spanish colonial administrators. Open sessions for all landholders were held at the Cabildo, and in the most famous of these, held on May 25, 1810, Buenos Aires voted to break from Spanish rule.

The first cabildo was finished in 1610, but in 1682 it was replaced with a grander two-story structure with eleven rows of arches. That building was constructed in fits and starts, finally opening in the middle of the 18th century. What you are seeing today is a scaled back version of the original, as three rows of arches have been lopped off from both sides to make room for the streets that line the building.

The Cabildo is open to the public and houses a small but interesting assortment of colonial-era memorabilia. The descriptions are in Spanish, but the entrance tickets are cheap. Feel free to pause the tour and head over. Just return here and press play when you have finished.

Let’s start walking. Facing the Cabildo, turn right and head toward the building with the portico resembling a Greek temple. This is the Metropolitan Cathedral, our next stop. Read More

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Major Landmarks

Museo Histórico Nacional del Cabildo y la Revolución de Mayo
Catedral Metropolitana de Buenos Aires
Manzana de las Luces

Getting There

Route Overview

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Start location
Bolívar 65, C1066 Cdad. Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Total distance

1km
Final location
Balcarce 78, C1064AAC Cdad. Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Distance back to start location

187m

Directions to Starting Point

This tour is easily accessible by subway via lines A, D, or E. Take Line A to Perú, Line D to Catedral, or Line E to Bolivar. Once you reach street level, walk east toward the Plaza de Mayo. Alternately, you can take a taxi to "Plaza de Mayo." The tour begins on the southwest corner of the Plaza de Mayo, facing the Cabildo, a white two-story colonial structure with five sets of archways and a tower.

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Tips

Places to stop along the way

You can complete the walk without entering any of the sites, but I highly recommend stepping inside the Cabildo and the Metropolitan Cathedral. Guided tours are given at the Manzana de las Luces (daily 3pm, Spanish only) and the Casa Rosada (Saturday and Sunday only, bilingual English and Spanish).

Best time of day

If you would like to tour the Casa Rosada (the presidential palace), try the walk on Saturday or Sunday. On Sunday mornings some of the religious sites will be inaccessible, but the San Telmo Street Fair, a popular souvenir stop, will be in session.

Precautions

As in any popular tourist district, be wary of pickpockets and keep an eye on your belongings.

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App Store Review

“Great app. walk around at your own pace, stop where you want, move on or speed up when you want. Read the script before you go or during the commentary, speed it up or replay it. Repeat the tour whenever you like.”