As Buenos Aires is strongly influenced by European culture, the city is sometimes referred to as the "Paris of South America".^[3]^[176] With its scores of theaters and productions, the city has the busiest live theater industry in South America.^[177] In fact, every weekend, there are about 300 active theaters with plays, a number that places the city as 1st worldwide, more than either London, New York or Paris, cultural Meccas in themselves. The number of cultural festivals with more than 10 sites and five years of existence also places the city as 2nd worldwide, after Edinburgh.^[178] The Centro Cultural Kirchner (Kirchner Cultural Center), located in Buenos Aires, is the largest cultural center of Latin America,^[179]^[180] and the third worldwide.^[181]

Buenos Aires is the home of the Teatro Colón, an internationally rated opera house.^[182] There are several symphony orchestras and choral societies. The city has numerous museums related to arts and crafts, history, fine arts, modern arts, decorative arts, popular arts, sacred art, theater and popular music, as well as the preserved homes of noted art collectors, writers, composers and artists. The city is home to hundreds of bookstores, public libraries and cultural associations (it is sometimes called "the city of books"), as well as the largest concentration of active theaters in Latin America. It has a zoo and botanical garden, a large number of landscaped parks and squares, as well as churches and places of worship of many denominations, many of which are architecturally noteworthy.^[182]

The city has been a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network after it was named "City of Design" in 2005.^[183]

Porteño identity

The identity of porteños has a rich and complex history, and has been the subject of much analysis and scrutiny.^[184] The great European immigration wave of the early 20th century was integral to "the growing primacy of Buenos Aires and the accompanying urban identity", and established the division between urban and rural Argentina more deeply.^[185] Immigrants "brought new traditions and cultural markers to the city," which were "then reimagined in the porteño context, with new layers of meanings because of the new location."^[186] The heads of state's attempt to populate the country and reframe the national identity resulted in the concentration of immigrants in the city and its suburbs, who generated a culture that is a "product of their conflicts of integration, their difficulties to live and their communication puzzles."^[187] In response to the immigration wave, during the 1920s and 1930s a nationalist trend within the Argentine intellectual elite glorified the gaucho figure as an exemplary archetype of Argentine culture; its synthesis with the European traditions conformed the new urban identity of Buenos Aires.^[188] The complexity of Buenos Aires' integration and identity formation issues increased when immigrants realized that their European culture could help them gain a greater social status.^[189] As the rural population moved to the industrialized city from the 1930s onwards, they reaffirmed their European roots,^[190] adopting endogamy and founding private schools, newspapers in foreign languages, and associations that promoted adherence to their countries of origin.^[189]

Porteños are generally characterized as night owls, cultured, talkative, uninhibited, sensitive, nostalgic, observant and arrogant.^[20]^[184] Argentines outside Buenos Aires often stereotype its inhabitants as egotist people, a feature that people from the Americas and westerners in general commonly attribute to the entire Argentine population and use as the subject of numerous jokes.^[191] Writing for BBC Mundo Cristina Pérez felt that "the idea of the [Argentines'] vastly developed ego finds strong evidence in lunfardo dictionaries," in words such as "engrupido" (meaning "vain" or "conceited") and "compadrito" (meaning both "brave" and "braggart"), the latter being an archetypal figure of tango.^[192] Paradoxically, porteños are also described as highly self-critical, something that has been called "the other side of the ego coin."^[192] Writers consider the existence of these behaviors the consequence of the European immigration and prosperity that the city experienced during the early 20th century, which generated a feeling of superiority in parts of the population.^[191]

Art

Thumb — Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art

Buenos Aires has a thriving arts culture,^[193] with "a huge inventory of museums, ranging from obscure to world-class."^[194] The barrios of Palermo and Recoleta are the city's traditional bastions in the diffusion of art, although in recent years there has been a tendency of appearance of exhibition venues in other districts such as Puerto Madero or La Boca; renowned venues include MALBA, the National Museum of Fine Arts, Fundación Proa, Faena Arts Center, and the Usina del Arte.^[195] Other popular institutions are the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art, the Benito Quinquela Martín Museum, the Evita Museum, the Museo de Arte Hispanoamericano Isaac Fernández Blanco, the José Hernández Museum, and the Palais de Glace, among others.^[196] A traditional event that occurs once a year is La Noche de los Museos ("Night of the Museums"), when the city's museums, universities, and artistic spaces open their doors for free until early morning; it usually takes place in November.^[197]^[198]

The first major artistic movements in Argentina coincided with the first signs of political liberty in the country, such as the 1913 sanction of the secret ballot and universal male suffrage, the first president to be popularly elected (1916), and the cultural revolution that involved the University Reform of 1918. In this context, in which there continued to be influence from the Paris School (Modigliani, Chagall, Soutine, Klee), three main groups arose. Buenos Aires has been the birthplace of several artists and movements of national and international relevance and has become a central motif in Argentine artistic production, especially since the 20th century.^[199]

Examples include: the Paris Group – so named for being influenced by the School of Paris – constituted by Antonio Berni, Aquiles Badi, Lino Enea Spilimbergo, Raquel Forner and Alfredo Bigatti, among others; and^[200] the La Boca artists – including Benito Quinquela Martín and Alfredo Lazzari, among others – who mostly came from Italy or were of Italian descent, and usually painted scenes from working-class port neighborhoods.^[201] During the 1960s, the Torcuato di Tella Institute – located in Florida Street – became a leading local center for pop art, performance art, installation art, conceptual art, and experimental theater; this generation of artists included Marta Minujín, Dalila Puzzovio, David Lamelas, Clorindo Testa and Diana Dowek.

Buenos Aires has also become a prominent center of contemporary street art; its welcoming attitude has made it one of the world's top capitals of such expression.^[202]^[203] The city's turbulent modern political history has "bred an intense sense of expression in porteños", and urban art has been used to depict these stories and as a means of protest.^[193]^[203] However, not all of its street art concerns politics, it is also used as a symbol of democracy and freedom of expression.^[193] Murals and graffiti are so common that they are considered "an everyday occurrence," and have become part of the urban landscape of barrios such as Palermo, Villa Urquiza, Coghlan and San Telmo.^[204] This has to do with the legality of such activities —provided that the building owner has consented—, and the receptiveness of local authorities, who even subsidize various works.^[202] The abundance of places for urban artists to create their work, and the relatively lax rules for street art, have attracted international artists such as Blu, Jef Aérosol, Aryz, ROA, and Ron English.^[202] Guided tours to see murals and graffiti around the city have been growing steadily.^[205]

Literature

Buenos Aires has long been considered an intellectual and literary capital of Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world.^[206]^[207] Despite its short urban history, Buenos Aires has an abundant literary production; its mythical-literary network "has grown at the same rate at which the streets of the city earned its shores to the pampas and buildings stretched its shadow on the curb."^[208] During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, culture boomed along with the economy and the city emerged as a literary capital and the seat of South America's most powerful publishing industry,^[209] and "even if the economic path grew rocky, ordinary Argentines embraced and stuck to the habit of reading."^[210] By the 1930s, Buenos Aires was the undisputed literary capital of the Spanish-speaking world, with Victoria Ocampo founding the highly influential Sur magazine—which dominated Spanish-language literature for thirty years—^[211] and the arrival of prominent Spanish writers and editors who were escaping the civil war.^[210]

Buenos Aires is one of the most prolific book publishers in Latin America and has more bookstores per capita than any other major city in the world.^[210]^[212] Buenos Aires has at least 734 bookstores—roughly 25 bookshops for every 100,000 inhabitants—far above other world cities like London, Paris, Madrid, Moscow and New York.^[210]^[212] The city also has a thriving market for secondhand books, ranking third in terms of secondhand bookshops per inhabitant, most of them congregated along Avenida Corrientes.^[212] Buenos Aires' book market has been described as "catholic in taste, immune to fads or fashion", with "wide and varied demand."^[212] The popularity of reading among porteños has been variously linked to the wave of mass immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and to the city's "obsession" with psychoanalysis.^[212]

The Buenos Aires International Book Fair has been a major event in the city since the first fair in 1975,^[206] having been described as "perhaps the most important and largest annual literary event in the Spanish-speaking world,"^[213] and "the most important cultural event in Latin America".^[214] In its 2019 edition, the Book Fair was attended by 1.8 million people.^[214]

Buenos Aires was designated as the World Book Capital for the year 2011 by UNESCO.^[215]

Music

According to the Harvard Dictionary of Music, "Argentina has one of the richest art music traditions and perhaps the most active contemporary musical life" in South America.^[216] Buenos Aires boasts of several professional orchestras, including the Argentine National Symphony Orchestra, the Ensamble Musical de Buenos Aires and the Camerata Bariloche; as well as various conservatories that offer professional music education, like the Conservatorio Nacional Superior de Música.^[216] As a result of the growth and commercial prosperity of the city in the late 18th century, theater became a vital force in Argentine musical life, offering Italian and French operas and Spanish zarzuelas.^[216] Italian music was very influential during the 19th century and the early 20th century, in part because of immigration, but operas and salon music were also composed by Argentines, including Francisco Hargreaves and Juan Gutiérrez.^[216] A nationalist trend that drew from Argentine traditions, literature and folk music was an important force during the 19th century, including composers Alberto Williams, Julián Aguirre, Arturo Berutti and Felipe Boero.^[216] In the 1930s, composers such as Juan Carlos Paz and Alberto Ginastera "began to espouse a cosmopolitan and modernist style, influenced by twelve-tone techniques and serialism"; while avant-garde music thrived by the 1960s, with the Rockefeller Foundation financing the Centro Interamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales, which brought internationally famous composers to work and teach in Buenos Aires, also establishing an electronic music studio.^[216]

The Río de la Plata is known for being the birthplace of tango, which is considered an emblem of Buenos Aires.^[217] The city considers itself the Tango World Capital, and as such hosts many related events, the most important being an annual festival and world tournament.^[217] The most important exponent of the genre is Carlos Gardel, followed by Aníbal Troilo; other important composers include Alfredo Gobbi, Ástor Piazzolla, Osvaldo Pugliese, Mariano Mores, Juan D'Arienzo and Juan Carlos Cobián.^[218] Tango music experienced a period of splendor during the 1940s, while in the 1960s and 1970s nuevo tango appeared, incorporating elements of classical and jazz music. A contemporary trend is neotango (also known as electrotango), with exponents such as Bajofondo and Gotan Project. On 30 September 2009, UNESCO's Intergovernmental Committee of Intangible Heritage declared tango part of the world's cultural heritage, making Argentina eligible to receive financial assistance in safeguarding tango for future generations.^[219]

The city hosts several music festivals every year. A popular genre is electronic dance music, with festivals including Creamfields BA, SAMC, Moonpark, and a local edition of Ultra Music Festival. Other well-known events include the Buenos Aires Jazz Festival, Personal Fest, Quilmes Rock and Pepsi Music. Some music festivals are held in Greater Buenos Aires, like Lollapalooza, which takes place at the Hipódromo de San Isidro in San Isidro.

Cinema

Argentine cinema history began in Buenos Aires with the first film exhibition on 18 July 1896 at the Teatro Odeón.^[220]^[221] With his 1897 film, La bandera Argentina, Eugène Py became one of the first filmmakers of the country; the film features a waving Argentine flag located at Plaza de Mayo.^[221] In the early 20th century, the first movie theaters of the country opened in Buenos Aires, and newsreels appeared, most notably El Viaje de Campos Salles a Buenos Aires.^[221] The real industry emerged with the advent of sound films, the first one being Muñequitas porteñas (1931).^[220]^[221] The newly founded Argentina Sono Film released ¡Tango! in 1933, the first integral sound production in the country.^[221] During the 1930s and the 1940s (commonly referred as the "Golden Age" of Argentine cinema), many films revolved around the city of Buenos Aires and tango culture, reflected in titles such as La vida es un tango, El alma del bandoneón, Adiós Buenos Aires, El Cantor de Buenos Aires and Buenos Aires canta. Argentine films were exported across Latin America, specially Libertad Lamarque's melodramas, and the comedies of Luis Sandrini and Niní Marshall. The popularity of local cinema in the Spanish-speaking world played a key role in the massification of tango music. Carlos Gardel, an iconic figure of tango and Buenos Aires, became an international star by starring in several films during that era.

In response to large studio productions, the "Generation of the 60s" appeared, a group of filmmakers that produced the first modernist films in Argentina during the early years of that decade. These included Manuel Antín, Lautaro Murúa and René Mugica, among others.^[222]

During the second half of the decade, films of social protest were presented in clandestine exhibitions, the work of Grupo Cine Liberación and Grupo Cine de la Base, who advocated what they called "Third Cinema". At that time, the country was under a military dictatorship after the coup d'état known as Argentine Revolution. One of the most notable films of this movement is La hora de los hornos (1968) by Fernando Solanas. During the period of democracy between 1973 and 1975, the local cinema experienced critical and commercial success, with titles including Juan Moreira (1973), La Patagonia rebelde (1974), La Raulito (1975), and La tregua (1974) – which became the first Argentine film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. However, because of censorship and a new military government, Argentine cinema stalled until the return of democracy in the 1980s. This generation – known as "Argentine Cinema in Liberty and Democracy" – were mostly young or postponed filmmakers and gained international notoriety. Camila (1984) by María Luisa Bemberg was nominated for the Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards, and Luis Puenzo's La historia oficial (1985) was the first Argentine film to receive the award.

Located in Buenos Aires is the Pablo Ducrós Hicken Museum of Cinema, the only one in the country dedicated to Argentine cinema and a pioneer of its kind in Latin America.^[223] Every year, the city hosts the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (BAFICI), which, in its 2015 edition, featured 412 films from 37 countries, and an attendance of 380 thousand people.^[224] Buenos Aires also hosts various other festivals and film cycles, like the Buenos Aires Rojo Sangre, devoted to horror.

Media

Buenos Aires is home to five Argentine television networks: America, Television Pública Argentina, El Nueve, Telefe, and El Trece. Four of them are located in Buenos Aires, and the studios of America is located in La Plata.

Fashion

Buenos Aires' inhabitants have been historically characterized as "fashion-conscious".^[225]^[226]^[227] National designers display their collections annually at the Buenos Aires Fashion Week (BAFWEEK) and related events.^[228] Inevitably being a season behind, it fails to receive much international attention.^[229] Nevertheless, the city remains an important regional fashion capital. According to Global Language Monitor, as of 2017^[update] the city is the 20th leading fashion capital in the world, ranking second in Latin America after Rio de Janeiro.^[230] In 2005, Buenos Aires was appointed as the first UNESCO City of Design,^[231] and received this title once again in 2007.^[232] Since 2015, the Buenos Aires International Fashion Film Festival Buenos Aires (BAIFFF) takes place, sponsored by the city and Mercedes-Benz.^[233] The government of the city also organizes La Ciudad de Moda ("The City of Fashion"), an annual event that serves as a platform for emerging creators and attempts to boost the sector by providing management tools.^[234]

The fashionable neighborhood of Palermo, particularly the area known as Soho, is where the latest fashion and design trends are presented.^[235] The "sub-barrio" of Palermo Viejo is also a popular port of call for fashion in the city.^[236] An increasing number of young, independent designers are also setting up their own shops in Bohemian San Telmo, known for its wide variety of markets and antique shops.^[235] Recoleta, on the other hand, is the epicenter of branches of exclusive and upscale fashion houses.^[235] In particular, Avenida Alvear is home to the most exclusive representatives of haute couture in the city.^[236]

Architecture

Buenos Aires architecture is characterized by its eclectic nature, with elements resembling Paris and Madrid. There is a mix, due to immigration, of Colonial, Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Neo-Gothic, and French Bourbon styles.^[237] Italian and French influences increased after the declaration of independence at the beginning of the 19th century, although the academic style persisted until the first decades of the 20th century. Attempts at renovation took place during the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, when European influences penetrated into the country, reflected by several buildings of Buenos Aires such as the Iglesia Santa Felicitas by Ernesto Bunge; the Palace of Justice, the National Congress, all of them by Vittorio Meano, and the Teatro Colón, by Francesco Tamburini and Vittorio Meano. The simplicity of the Rioplatense baroque style can be clearly seen in Buenos Aires through the works of Italian architects such as André Blanqui and Antonio Masella, in the churches of San Ignacio, Nuestra Señora del Pilar, the Cathedral and the Cabildo.

In 1912, the Basilica del Santisimo Sacramento was opened to the public; its construction was funded by the generous donation of Argentine philanthropist Mercedes Castellanos de Anchorena, a member of Argentina's most prominent family. The church is an excellent example of French neo-classicism. With extremely high-grade decorations in its interior, the magnificent Mutin-Cavaillé coll organ (the biggest ever installed in an Argentine church with more than four thousand tubes and four manuals) presided the nave. The altar is full of marble and was the biggest ever built in South America at that time.^[238]

In 1919, the construction of Palacio Barolo began. This was South America's tallest building at the time and was the first Argentine skyscraper built with concrete (1919–1923).^[239] The building was equipped with 9 elevators, plus a twenty-meter-high (65 ft) lobby hall with paintings in the ceiling and Latin phrases embossed in golden bronze letters. A 300,000-candela beacon was installed at the top (110 m), making the building visible even from Uruguay. In 2009, the Barolo Palace went under an exhaustive restoration, and the beacon was made operational again.

In 1936, the 120-meter-tall (395 ft) Kavanagh Building was inaugurated. The building, with its 12 elevators (provided by Otis) and the world's first central air conditioning system (provided by the North American company Carrier), is still an architectural landmark in Buenos Aires.^[240]

The architecture of the second half of the 19th century continued to reproduce French neoclassic models, such as the headquarters of the Banco de la Nación Argentina built by Alejandro Bustillo, and the Museo Hispanoamericano de Buenos Aires of Martín Noel. However, since the 1930s, the influence of Le Corbusier and European rationalism consolidated in a group of young architects from the University of Tucumán, among whom Amancio Williams stands out. The construction of skyscrapers proliferated in Buenos Aires until the 1950s. Newer modern high-technology buildings by Argentine architects in the last years of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st include the Le Parc Tower by Mario Álvarez, the Torre Fortabat by Sánchez Elía, and the Repsol-YPF Tower by César Pelli.

Theaters

Buenos Aires has over 280 theaters, more than any other city in the world.^[241] Because of this, Buenos Aires is declared the "World's Capital of Theater".^[242] They show everything from musicals to ballet, comedy to circuses.^[243] Some of them are:

Teatro Colón is ranked the third best opera house in the world by National Geographic,^[244] and is acoustically considered to be among the world's five best concert venues. It is bounded by the wide 9 de Julio Avenue (technically Cerrito Street), Arturo Toscanini Street, Tucumán Street, as well as Libertad Street at its main entrance.^[245] It is in the heart of the city on a site once occupied by Ferrocarril Oeste's Plaza Parque station.
Cervantes Theater (Teatro Nacional Cervantes), located on Córdoba Avenue and two blocks north of Buenos Aires' renowned opera house, the Colón Theater, the Cervantes houses three performance halls, of which the María Guerrero Salon serves as its main hall. Its 456 m² (4,910 sq ft) stage features a 12 m (39 ft) rotating circular platform and can be extended by a further 2.7 m (8.9 ft). The Guerrero Salon can seat 860 spectators, including 512 in the galleries. A secondary hall, the Orestes Caviglia Salon, can seat 150 and is mostly reserved for chamber music concerts. The Luisa Vehíl Salon is a multipurpose room known for its extensive gold leaf decor.
Teatro Gran Rex opened on 8 July 1937 as the largest cinema in South America of its time; it is an Art Deco-style theater.
Teatro Avenida (Avenida Theater) was inaugurated on Buenos Aires' central Avenida de Mayo in 1908 with a production of Spanish dramatist Lope de Vega's Justice Without Revenge. The production was directed by María Guerrero, a Spanish Argentine theater director who popularized classical drama in Argentina during the late 19th century and would establish the important Cervantes Theater (Teatro Nacional Cervantes) in 1921.

Sports

Buenos Aires has been a candidate city for the Summer Olympic Games on three occasions: for the 1956 Games, which were lost by a single vote to Melbourne; for the 1968 Summer Olympics, held in Mexico City; and in 2004, when the games were awarded to Athens. However, Buenos Aires hosted the first Pan American Games (1951)^[182] and was also host city to several World Championship events: the 1950 and 1990 Basketball World Championships, the 1982 and 2002 Men's Volleyball World Championships and, most remembered, the 1978 FIFA World Cup, won by Argentina on 25 June 1978, when it defeated the Netherlands at the Estadio Monumental 3–1. In September 2013, the city hosted the 125th IOC Session, Tokyo was elected the host city of the 2020 Summer Olympics and Thomas Bach was new IOC President. Buenos Aires bid to host the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics.^[246] On 4 July 2013, the IOC elected Buenos Aires as the host city.^[22] Buenos Aires hosted the 2006 South American Games too.

Football is a popular pastime among many of the city's citizens, as Buenos Aires, featuring no fewer than 24 professional teams, has the highest concentration of teams of any city in the world.^[247] with many of its teams playing in the major league. The best-known rivalry is the one between Boca Juniors and River Plate, the match is better known as Superclásico. Watching a match between these two teams was deemed one of the "50 sporting things you must do before you die" by The Observer.^[247] Other major clubs include San Lorenzo de Almagro, Club Atlético Huracán, Vélez Sarsfield, Chacarita Juniors, Club Ferro Carril Oeste, Nueva Chicago and Asociación Atlética Argentinos Juniors. Diego Maradona, born in Lanús Partido, a county south of Buenos Aires, is widely hailed as one of the sport's greatest players of all time. Maradona started his career with Argentinos Juniors and went on to play for Boca Juniors, the national football team and others (most notably FC Barcelona in Spain and SSC Napoli in Italy).^[248]

In 1912, the practice of basketball in Argentina was started by the Asociación Cristiana de Jóvenes (YMCA) of Buenos Aires,^[249] when Canadian professor Paul Phillip was in charge of teaching basketball at the YMCA of Paseo Colón Avenue. The first basketball clubs in Argentina, Hindú and Independiente, were located at the YMCAs of the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area. By 1912 the first basketball games were held by YMCA headquarters in Buenos Aires. Nowadays, the Argentine Basketball Confederation is headquartered in Buenos Aires.

Argentina has been the home of world champions in professional boxing. Carlos Monzon was a hall of fame World Middleweight champion, and the former lineal Middleweight champion Sergio Martinez hails from Argentina. Omar Narvaez, Lucas Matthysse, Carolina Duer, and Marcos Maidana are five modern-day world champions as well.

Argentines' love for horses can be experienced in several ways: horse racing at the Hipódromo Argentino de Palermo racetrack, polo in the Campo Argentino de Polo (located just across Libertador Avenue from the Hipódromo), and pato, a kind of basketball played on horseback that was declared the national game in 1953. Polo was brought to the country in the second half of the 19th century by English immigrants.

The first rugby union match in Argentina was played in 1873 in the Buenos Aires Cricket Club Ground, located in the neighborhood of Palermo, where the Galileo Galilei planetarium is located today. Rugby enjoys widespread popularity in Buenos Aires, most especially in the north of the city, which boasts more than eighty rugby clubs. The city is home to the Argentine Super Rugby franchise, the Jaguares. The Argentina national rugby union team competes in Buenos Aires in international matches such as the Rugby Championship.

Buenos Aires native Guillermo Vilas (who was raised in Mar del Plata) and Gabriela Sabatini were great tennis players of the 1970s and 1980s^[182] and popularized tennis Nationwide in Argentina. Vilas won the ATP Buenos Aires numerous times in the 1970s. Other popular sports in Buenos Aires are golf, basketball, rugby and field hockey.

Juan Manuel Fangio won five Formula One World Driver's Championships, and was only outstripped by Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton, with seven Championships. The Buenos Aires Oscar Gálvez car-racing track hosted 20 Formula One events as the Argentine Grand Prix, between 1953 and 1998; it was discontinued on financial grounds. The track features various local categories on most weekends. The 2009, 2010, 2011, 2015 Dakar Rally started and ended in the city.

El Monumental, home of River Plate, hosted the final game of the FIFA World Cup Championship in 1978.