Mid-range · 6-hour walk · Buenos Aires
Plaza de Mayo to Recoleta in six hours
The pink palace and the protest square, the San Telmo market, then the most theatrical cemetery in the Americas.
Buenos Aires is a big city with a small walkable core, and this route does the core then takes a taxi to the cemetery, because the twenty blocks in between are not worth the hour. Sunday changes everything: San Telmo's market fills ten blocks of Defensa and is the single best day to do this walk.
The route, stop by stop
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Plaza de Mayo
The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have circled the pyramid here every Thursday afternoon since 1977.
25 min here Walk here → -
Casa Rosada
The presidential palace, pink since the 1870s. Free guided tours at weekends, booked online.
30 min here Walk here → -
Cabildo of Buenos Aires
The colonial town hall where the 1810 revolution began, now a small free museum.
20 min here Walk here → -
San Telmo Market
A wrought-iron market hall from 1897. On Sundays the antiques fair spills ten blocks up Defensa.
45 min here Walk here → -
Recoleta Cemetery
Arrive by taxi from the previous stop
Ten minutes by taxi rather than an hour on foot. Ninety mausoleums are national monuments and Eva Peron is in the Duarte vault.
50 min here Walk here → -
El Ateneo Grand Splendid
A 1919 theatre turned bookshop, with the boxes intact and a cafe on the stage. Routinely called the most beautiful in the world.
30 min here Walk here →
More in Buenos Aires
Every walking route in Buenos Aires, or the full Buenos Aires guide for where to stay and what a day costs.