Buenos Aires hotels collection

The Río de la Plata is silver in name only: its water is brown, laden with silt from the Paraná, and so wide that the far bank cannot be seen. In Recoleta, town houses wear Parisian slate mansards; in San Telmo, granite-cobbled streets lead to houses built around patios. On façades and old buses, the fileteadores paint scrolls, ribbons and shadowed lettering with a fine brush, sometimes slipping in a proverb. At the top of the Palacio Barolo, built after Dante's Divine Comedy, a lighthouse was meant to answer that of its twin, the Palacio Salvo, in Montevideo, on the far bank.