Buenos Aires, Argentina — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Buenos Aires known for?

Buenos Aires is the largest and most populous of Argentina's provinces. It is grassland country. Almost all of it lies within the Pampas, the flat and fertile plain that feeds much of the nation's grain and cattle.

The autonomous City of Buenos Aires sits in its northeast, federalized and administered apart, so the province rings the capital rather than containing it. La Plata serves as the provincial capital instead. Along the eastern edge, the Atlantic coast strings out a run of beach towns, with Mar del Plata the busiest of them.

Where is Buenos Aires?

Buenos Aires fills the east-central pampa of Argentina, the country's largest province by both area and population. Almost the whole of it is flat. It lies within the Pampas, the vast fertile plain that runs west from the Atlantic toward the distant Andes, and here the land is grass and grain nearly to every horizon.

The Atlantic Ocean forms the long eastern edge, and in the northeast the wide estuary of the Río de la Plata divides the province from Uruguay across the water. The federal capital sits inside that northeastern corner, an autonomous district the province surrounds but does not govern. Water and rock break the flatness in only a few places.

The Río Salado crosses from the northwest to the southeast for some 640 kilometres before it empties into Samborombón Bay on the estuary, draining more than half the province. Two low ranges rise out of the plain far to the south. The Sierra del Tandil stands near the town of Tandil, and the Sierra de la Ventana climbs higher toward Bahía Blanca, where Cerro Tres Picos reaches 1,239 metres, the highest ground for hundreds of kilometres.

Entre Ríos, Santa Fe, Córdoba, La Pampa and Río Negro ring the province inland; the extreme south shades into Patagonia. Everything else is open country.

What is Buenos Aires like?

The province lives by the land and the sea in equal measure. Its identity is rural at heart. The Pampas gave Argentina the gaucho, the horseman of the open range, and the estancias that still work the grass keep the cattle culture alive in asados, riding and country fairs.

San Antonio de Areco, north of the capital, holds the best-known gaucho festival each year. That plains tradition sits beside a very different coastal one. Summer empties the inland towns toward the shore.

Mar del Plata fills with families for the season, its theatres and casino running at full tilt while the beaches below the headland stay crowded from morning to night. Football threads through all of it, and clubs from across the province carry fierce local followings. La Plata adds the note of a planned city, its wide diagonals and grand civic buildings laid out to a single design in the 1880s.

Spanish is the language everywhere, spoken in the strong Rioplatense accent shared with the capital across the estuary. Meat, mate and dulce de leche anchor the table.

What is the history of Buenos Aires?

Pedro de Mendoza first planted a settlement on the estuary in 1536, and Juan de Garay refounded the port for good in 1580. City and hinterland were long one. The break came in 1880, when the City of Buenos Aires was federalized and lifted out of the province to become the national capital.

That left the province without a seat of its own, so Governor Dardo Rocha laid out an entirely new capital on open ground and founded La Plata in 1882. A purpose-built city on a mathematical grid, it has governed the province ever since.

What is the climate of Buenos Aires?

The province is temperate and largely humid, warmest and most subtropical in the north and cooler toward the south. Rain falls fairly evenly through the year, a little heavier in the warm months, and it thins out as you move inland from the Atlantic. The coast around Mar del Plata runs milder and more oceanic, with humid summers and cool winters that can draw in cold air off the far south.

Summers are hot on the open Pampas. Winters there are chilly but rarely severe.

How do you get to Buenos Aires?

Most arrive through the capital it surrounds. The main international airport, Ezeiza, sits just inside the province's northeastern edge, so nearly every visitor lands on provincial soil before anything else. From there roads and rail fan out across the flat pampa to every corner.

La Plata is a short run southeast toward the estuary. Mar del Plata and the Atlantic beaches lie a few hours down the coast, and long highways strike west and south toward Bahía Blanca and the threshold of Patagonia.