Buenos Aires

Famed for its boulevards and ballrooms, the Argentine capital is reinventing itself through restaurant collaborations, a new arts district and a revamped dockland park

- By Vanessa Bell

Think Buenos Aires and the European associations are inevitable. Its reputation as the ‘Paris of South America’ has its roots in the late 1800s when the ideal of modernity among well-heeled Porteños (as Buenos Aires’ citizens are known) was modelled on France. From fashion to ornate facades, the capital of the fledgling independent Argentina — and its growing population of European émigrés — fostered a Parisian vogue that reached fever pitch in the early 20th century, when it welcomed a who’s who of avant-garde creatives, from Marcel Duchamp to Le Corbusier.

But to declare the city’s heyday long past, its glamour faded, its Camelot fallen, or to dwell too heavily on its history — Argentina’s string of coup d’états and dictatorships between 1930 and 1983 — is to misunderstand the dynamism and daring spirit woven into the fabric of modern-day Buenos Aires. This is a city whose track record proves that periods of adversity only pave the way for sparkling reinvention.