Free tour

Free tour Retiro and Recoleta: Aristocratic Buenos Aires

4.93

Excellent(94)

Buenos Aires

Duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes

Languages: English and Spanish

Guru: Vive Buenos Aires

PRO

Verified quality

Registered on 24 August 2020

Hi there! We’re a group of passionate Buenos Aires–based guides with over 30 years of combined experience leading free walking tours around the world. After years of showing travelers cities across different continents, we’ve come together to share the one we all call home — Buenos Aires — from our own unique perspectives. Our goal? To make the city’s stories come alive. To help you feel the history in its streets, its people, its sounds, and its contradictions. From politics to tango, from architecture to football, from literature to nightlife — Buenos Aires has it all. And we want to walk you through it, not just to explain the past, but to understand the pulse of today’s Argentina. This city is alive, unpredictable, and endlessly fascinating. Join us on a journey through its myths, revolutions, passions, and dreams — and see why Buenos Aires is anything but boring. Come walk with us. Let’s make sense of the chaos together.

Free reservation and cancellation

Pay-what-you-want tour, no set price, reservation and cancellation are free

Tour description

Aristocratic Buenos Aires!
Join me on a walk through two of the most architecturally impressive neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, home to the French-obsessed oligarchic elites of late 1800, who tried to shape Buenos Aires after the French capital.

Discover the glamour and extravagance of the "Paris of South America" by visiting Retiro and Recoleta. The chosen neighbourhoods by Argentina's French-obsessed economic (and oligarchic) elites in the late 1800s and the beginning of the 20th century, where they constructed 60-room French palaces to show off their wealth and power, and competed for fame and influence.
San Martin and his liberations campaigns, the golden age of Argentina, stories of love and revenge that echo through time, quirks, and bizarre facts and habits of Buenos Aires and its people, "los porteños".
Go back into the glamour of the old days, as you learn about Argentina's "Belle Époque", and how their fortunes (and misfortunes) intertwined with the ups and downs of the country throughout the 20th century and all the way until today.

During the tour, we will see:

San Martín Square:

- Anchorena Palace
- Kavanagh building
- Paz Palace
- Monument to José de San Martín (Argentina's main National Hero)

The Monumental Tower (formerly known as the British Tower)
Arroyo Street
Embassy of France
Embassy of Brazil
Alvear Avenue: home to Argentina's finest palaces

Useful information:

The tour will end at the Plaza Francia, right in front of the Cemetery of Recoleta.
This tour DOES NOT include the cemetery

Highlights

What will we see on this tour?

Meeting point:

Buenos Aires, C1006 Buenos Aires, Argentina

We meet right by the main monument at Plaza San Martin. I have beard, moustache and glasses. I will send a message on the day of the tour to make it easier to recognise me

Outside visit

monumento al Libertador General San Martín

Outside visit

Peace Palace

Outside visit

Kavanagh Building

How much does this tour cost?

Free tours do not have a set price, instead, each person gives the guru at the end the amount they consider appropriate (amounts usually range from €15 to $50 depending on satisfaction with the tour).