1 destination · 28 things to do

Argentina

Buenos Aires is the great late-night capital of the southern hemisphere: a city of Parisian boulevards and Italian appetites, where dinner starts at ten, the milongas fill after midnight and the steak arrives straight from the coals of the parrilla. This guide books it properly — a guided tour of the Teatro Colón, one of the finest opera houses on earth, the marble avenues of Recoleta Cemetery where Evita lies, Frida Kahlo and Tarsila do Amaral at MALBA, Van Gogh and the great Argentine painters free at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, a tango show worth the money and a milonga where you can watch the real thing — and pairs it with Sunday antiques on Calle Defensa, the painted tin houses of Caminito, a theatre turned bookshop, the rose garden and lakes of Palermo, and day trips by boat into the Tigre Delta or by ferry across the river to Uruguay. It is honest about the practical side too, from how money now works for visitors to which corners of La Boca to stay within. Then it matches you to the right hotel, from the gilded Alvear Palace and the Faena in a red-brick riverside mill to garden boutiques in Palermo and restored patios in San Telmo, because in a city that never seems to go to bed, where you sleep decides which nights you get to keep.