Free Tour of Buenos Aires: Where It All Began

Before Buenos Aires became a city, it was a gamble.

A distant port on the edge of an empire.

Strategic, unstable, and for a long time, undervalued.

On this free walking tour, we explore the true origin of Buenos Aires. We walk through the oldest neighborhoods of the city — San Telmo and Montserrat — following the streets, the buildings, and the decisions that shaped its first centuries.

We talk about Spanish colonization, the river and the port, the rise of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, and how this settlement went from being a peripheral, unwanted city to becoming one of the most important centers in South America. We also remember that this territory was already inhabited by Indigenous peoples such as the Querandí, and that the European arrival changed that reality forever. We’ll see colonization and resistance, power and faith, merchants and smugglers, Jesuits, viceroys, criollos, and revolutionaries.

This tour focuses on how people lived, not just dates and major events.

What they believed, what they feared, how they worked, how power was organized, and how a distinct identity began to form.

We visit some of the oldest surviving buildings in Buenos Aires, places where politics, religion, daily life, and the first tensions that shaped the city all intersected. Official history blends with smaller, human stories—those that make the past feel close and real.

Buenos Aires did not grow because everything went right.

It grew through conflict, contradiction, and constant change.

Every corner holds a story.

Every brick remembers something.

If you want to discover a city from its origin and understand how a society is built over time, this tour will change the way you see Buenos Aires.

Come and see the city where it all began.

ROUTE

Plaza de Mayo · Casa Rosada · Metropolitan Cathedral · Cabildo · Manzana de las Luces · San Ignacio Church · Mafalda · Zanjón de Granados · San Telmo Market · Dorrego Square