La Boca is a great favorite of Buenos Aires tourists famed for picturesque and brightly coloured houses of wood and corrugated iron, decorated with grotesque effigies of famous Argentines. It is very amusing that Maradona’s grotesque effigy looks rather more like him than it should!
La Boca is a port and a very old part of Buenos Aires City just south of San Telmo and Puerto Madero.
The barrio of La Boca functioned as Buenos Aires first port.
La Boca was the arrival point for thousands of European immigrants (mainly Italian) between 1870 and 1930. Boca, meaning mouth, describes this barrios geography at the confluence of the Riachuelo River.
When you travel to La Boca, please keep in mind that the La Boca Buenos Aires tourists want to see is just one short street, Caminito, maybe 100 meters long; Caminito means ‘short or small street’ in English. Also, please heed our warning at the end of this blog.
We sometimes hear people call Caminito Street tacky and warn tourists off, this is a mistake, we feel those tourists and Argentines misinformed, they miss the whole point of La Boca as an open-air museum.
Caminito is the creation of Buenos Aires’ artesanos and in particular Quinquela Martin. In the late 1950’s, Buenos Aires City cleared the slums of La Boca (conventillos) to build new housing. Quinquela Martin successfully campaigned to preserve the ports vibrant and colorful history as Caminito. In the past, poorly constructed conventillos converted and erected by immigrants used materials and paints scavenged from the port creating a wonderfully eclectic, bright and unconventional neighborhood you see preserved as colorful Caminito.
Caminito is alive with tango, street performers and more recently, La Boca is becoming the city’s Bohemia, but a tour is no more than a morning or afternoon between the hours of 10h00 to 19h00.
Buenos Aires tourists should therefore approach La Boca as an open air museum, to enjoy the sightseeing, learn some tango steps, buy great local art and craft and watch the street performers who range from the most chic and acrobatic tango dancers, to some of the strangest and outlandish crazies to perform anywhere.
La Boca has an even greater claim to fame; La Bombonera (J.F Armando) Stadium, home to Boca Juniors, is located in La Boca and Boca Juniors is one of the most successful football teams in South America. This brings me to my last point on tourism, if you are a football fan do not leave Argentina without seeing a football match – you will be held hostage by tides of pure emotion, and beaten back and forth by wretchedness and euphoria. Even ‘football widows’ enjoy Argentine football matches.
There are many great photo opportunities and we say without reservation that Buenos Aires tourists should not miss visiting La Boca.
We tend to take visitors around 11h00 on a Saturday or Sunday, we always have lunch in La Boca at our favorite pasta restaurant:
Il Matterello
Martín Rodríguez 517, Buenos Aires
Tel: 4307-0529
We then head of to San Telmo for the afternoon to wander around the street market and antique shops down Defensa to Plaza de Mayo where to find Casa Rosada (the Pink House).
Warning: Please travel to and from La Boca by taxi and do not walk around outside the designated tourist area, it is not safe. We publish apartments on our website for ‘local’ Argentines who wish to stay close to their families and we do not recommend those apartments to tourists.
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