Buenos Aires itinerary for first-timers

The square where Argentina's history happens, with the pink presidential palace at one end, the Cabildo colonial council house at the other and the cathedral where Pope Francis was archbishop.

• Casa Rosada
• Cabildo
• Metropolitan Cathedral

The grand avenue built in the 1890s to link the Casa Rosada with Congress, lined with Parisian-style buildings, old cafés and the Art Nouveau Palacio Barolo.

• Palacio Barolo
• Café Tortoni facade
• Congress building

The pedestrian shopping street of the Microcentro, crowded on weekdays with office workers, street performers and the Galerías Pacífico mall under its painted dome.

• Galerías Pacífico
• Street performers
• Reconquista street

The 67-metre obelisk in the middle of Avenida 9 de Julio, one of the widest streets in the world, with the theatres of Avenida Corrientes and the opera house of the Teatro Colón beside it.

• Obelisco
• Avenida 9 de Julio
• Teatro Colón

Teatro Colón runs guided tours by day; evening performances are the best way to see inside.

The oldest barrio, cobbled streets and faded mansions, where on Sundays the antiques fair fills Plaza Dorrego and the stalls run the length of Defensa Street with tango dancers on the corners.

• Plaza Dorrego
• Defensa Street stalls
• Street tango

The fair is on Sunday only; on other days the antique shops and the market are still open.

The 1897 iron-and-glass market hall, half antiques and half food stalls, the easiest place in the barrio for an empanada or a choripán.

• Market hall
• Antique stalls
• Food counters

The old port barrio settled by Italian immigrants, with the painted corrugated-iron houses of Caminito, street tango and artists' stalls, and the Boca Juniors stadium, La Bombonera, a few blocks away.

• Caminito
• La Bombonera
• Painted houses

Stay on the Caminito streets and go by taxi or bus, not on foot from San Telmo; leave before dark.

The 19th-century docks reborn as the city's newest district: brick warehouses turned into restaurants, the white Puente de la Mujer footbridge, the museum ship Fragata Sarmiento and the Costanera Sur nature reserve beyond.

• Puente de la Mujer
• Fragata Sarmiento
• Costanera Sur

The most Parisian barrio, with grand apartment buildings, the Recoleta Cemetery where Eva Perón is buried among marble mausoleums, and the Floralis Genérica steel flower in the park beside it.

• Recoleta Cemetery
• Floralis Genérica
• Plaza Francia

The cemetery is a maze; pick up a map at the entrance to find the Duarte family tomb.

The Palermo Woods, the city's biggest park: lakes with pedal boats, the rose garden with more than a thousand varieties, the planetarium and the Japanese garden nearby.

• Rose garden
• The lakes
• Planetarium

The city's creative quarter of low houses, murals, design shops and bars, centred on Plaza Serrano, where a craft fair takes over at weekends and the terraces fill after dark.

• Plaza Serrano
• Street murals
• Jorge Luis Borges street