Humberto 1º 340 (between Defensa & Balcarce), San Telmo

[Open Monday - Saturday, 8:30am to Midday and 4pm to 7pm. Sundays, 1pm to 6pm.]

I like churches.

Born and raised a good Catholic boy, I was.

…but that has nothing to do with why I like churches. I’m an agnostic, and instead like them because God generally gets some of the best architecture around. And in Buenos Aires it’s no different. So, this is the start of an attempted series on churches in BA, which may well be spread out over several years, cunningly hiding it’s series-ness from view.

The San Pedro Gonzalez Telmo church (try saying that after a few pints), is also known as the Nuestra Señora de Belén (Our Lady of Belen) church. A good church can never have too many names in my book.

A Little Church History

Some Jesuits named Blanqui, Bautista, Primoli and Schmidt designed the original and kicked off the building in 1734. That makes it one of the oldest churches in the city. But not the oldest, which I’ll cover at some point soon I guess. The church’s architecture was then added to and restored a fair few times up to the present, which accounts for it’s lovely eclectic style. Apparently it is ‘neo-colonial’. I prefer to call it ‘fancy iced wedding cake’:

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On the corner of Don Pedro de Mendoza & Del Valle Iberlucea, La Boca

Note – if you would like to book a private guided walking tour in Buenos Aires that includes a visit to Caminito and the surrounding area of La Boca, please click on the following link and scroll down to the section on our San Telmo & La Boca tour: BUENOS AIRES PRIVATE TOURS

Quite possibly the biggest mainstream tourist hotspot in Buenos Aires, the colorful Caminito street in the otherwise run down barrio of La Boca is often looked down upon as commercial, touristy, tacky, tango-ey rubbish by locals and travel guides alike.

However, I really think it is just trendy to say such things, because this small road and the immediate area around it do in fact have both an interesting history and the opportunity for taking some great photos, even though you will probably be surrounded by several American and Japanese tourists also happily snapping away before they quickly hop back onto their tour bus.

But give Caminito a chance! You might just like it…

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Corrientes 3247 (between Aguero & Anchorena), Abasto

[Open 10am to 10pm daily]

Largest Shopping Center in Buenos Aires

The Abasto shopping center is probably the one mall in Buenos Aires that has at least something to appeal to all people, of all ages, although apart from its wonderful 1930s Art Deco architecture you could not really argue that it is an authentic Buenos Aires experience.

As far as shopping goes, it is full of mainstream clothes stores, and it boasts over 250 brands to choose from, including major labels like Nike, Lacoste and YSL. As I said, not all that authentic an experience, but at least the building itself really is quite beautiful (see right), and is on a very large scale – it is the biggest mall in the city of Buenos Aires (Unicenter, the biggest mall in Argentina, is outside the city limits).

This area of Abasto also has played a major role in the social and tango history of Buenos Aires, and for those reasons alone it is worth a quick visit, even if you are not interested in the shops inside, which will probably be quite similar to the ones that you can find back home. And there is also a range of things to see and do inside the center, which can be found near the end of this blog post.

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First Weekly Buenos Aires Blog Update

[4th - 10th December 2006]

Hello and welcome to the first of my new weekly highlights posts covering what has caught my eye in the Buenos Aires blogosphere. Think of this a kind of a low-brow Global Voices Online solely covering BA.

Unfortunately, I can’t write in this blog as much as I would like to, but there are many other excellent blogs about BA out there – and so I am going to let them do some of the work for me! Most of the ones I know of can be found listed over at the excellent Bloggers in Argentina.

Each week I will link to the best blog posts I have read that I think will be of interest to visitors to Buenos Aires, and post the links up here, with a little commentary added. If I have missed something interesting out or seem to be overlooking a whole blog completely, please comment below to draw my attention to it. Here goes (warning, there is a lot this week!)…

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Suarez 396 (corner of Av. Almirante Brown), La Boca

[Also has branches at Av. Corrientes 1300 (City Center), Av. Rivadavia 5401 (Caballito), and Av Pueyrredon 123 (Once)]

Pizza is a serious business in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires was largely built on huge amounts of European immigration around the turn of the 20th century, with the large majority coming from Italy, not Spain, as many would believe (they came in second). In fact, according to a Yale essay on Argentine Immigration:

“Between 1857 and 1958 the main source of immigrants to Argentina were Italy and Spain accounting for 46 and 33 percent, respectively, of the total. The rest of the immigrants were made up of different nationalities, including French, German, British, and Irish.”

This amounted to almost 3 million Italians in that period, most of which arrived in the massive rush between 1880-1916. I never thought I would be quoting a Yale essay while talking about a plain old Pizza joint, but there you go.

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