Argentina · Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires · Buenos Aires
Barracas, Buenos Aires — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Barracas is a barrio of Buenos Aires between the Riachuelo and the Belgrano railway, named from the barraca, a makeshift house of rough materials.
About Barracas
Where to stay in Barracas
Not every neighbourhood fits every trip — here's what each one is good for.
Defensa and Caseros mark the useful edge. Those streets bound the side of Barracas that faces the rest of Buenos Aires, and a room among them keeps the Basílica del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús and the Postal and Telegraphic Museum inside a walk. The Riachuelo side reads differently.
Down toward the water, and out along Amancio Alcorta and Lavardén, the barrio thins into its boundary streets and rooms grow hard to find.
About Barracas
What are the main landmarks in Barracas?
The Basílica del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús is the building everybody knows. Museums do the rest, and they make an odd set: the Museo De La Balanza, the Serpentarium Museum, the Postal and Telegraphic Museum, and the Museum Of Natural Sciences Of Medical Zoological Specialty, none of them the kind of collection a visitor expects to meet in one barrio. Two men are marked in monuments.
Hipólito Vieytes and Juan Larrea are commemorated in Barracas, while the Museo Histórico de Salud Mental del Hospital José T. Borda keeps the record of the hospital it belongs to.
What is the history of Barracas?
The name comes from the barraca. That word describes a temporary house put up out of rudimentary materials, and the barrio carries it from the structures that once stood on this ground beside the Riachuelo, an origin that fixes a district's character long before any basilica arrives in it. Streets and a railway drew the rest.
Regimiento de Patricios, Defensa, Caseros, Vélez Sársfield, Amancio Alcorta, Lafayette, and Lavardén enclose Barracas together with the Ferrocarril General Manuel Belgrano, and the Basílica del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús went up inside that outline.
Where is Barracas?
The Riachuelo closes one side of Barracas and the Ferrocarril General Manuel Belgrano the other, with Caseros and Vélez Sársfield among the streets between.
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Updated August 2026