Discover the heart of the country that gave us the Tango with The Real Argentina culture guide. Argentina is a rich cultural melting pot — a unique mixture of European and Latin American influences which are reflected in its innovative music, literature and lifestyle.
The friendly and passionate people are what make Argentina such a warm and welcoming place. The combination of urban glamour, underground traditions, and vast wilderness give vibrancy and character to the country’s cultural landscape.
Argentine culture caters to all tastes: take in a game of football at the famous La Bombonera stadium, peruse the modern art at MALBA, or dance the Tango at a milonga in Buenos Aires.
Some of the best things in BA can be found behind closed doors, be it dining, cocktails, art and even shopping. Over the last few years a large chunk of BA’s shopping scene has gone underground due to soaring rents for retail spaces. The trend for emerging designers and brands is to sell their collections by appointment only from the privacy of their apartment or a private studio space or workshop…
Four years ago, I was bronzing myself on the sandy beach in the morning, attending embassy-organised cocktail luncheons in the afternoon while slyly earwigging film critics to help me decide what movie to watch later that evening. Ah, the glamorous world of cinema. Welcome to Pantalla Pinamar. While those essentials plus the obligatory red carpet still form the core of this Argentine-European film festival, now in its eleventh year, there have been a few changes during the intervening years…
Buenos Aires in the summer is hot. A few years ago, someone somewhere took their giant cigarette and burned a hole right through the ozone layer above the city, creating saunas out of any homes lacking AC and forcing Argentines to develop a system for having a constant supply of ice to cool water when the cold tap runs hot (note the buckets of ice in freezers decanted from the ice trays). Most of the summer is spent sweating it out on the sidewalks, wishing for a pool…
Following TRA’s recent look at chefs and sommeliers having an impact around the world, this time we meet some of Argentina’a contemporary cultural heroes, including a Golden Globe winner and a Laurence Olivier Award winner.
At the risk of sounding like a typical girl, or worse, Carrie from Sex and the City, I love shoes. I would go so far as to say I’m a shoe fiend. I think I love shoes so much because I don’t have to take off anything, apart from the shoes I’m wearing, to try them on (I also think that’s why I only have 2 pairs of jeans). When I arrived in Argentina a year and half ago, I had 3 pairs of shoes. Now I have 9…
It doesn’t take a design buff to see that Buenos Aires is an architectural wonderland and a melting pot of styles and influences. And behind the impressive gothic, Art Deco and other facades, there are some equally impressive interior spaces where every last design detail has been carefully considered, from industrial-style boutiques and bars to showrooms hidden in secret gardens.
Baptised as the ‘land of silver,’ Argentina has long been associated with the shiny noble metal, right back to its very beginnings as a country. Legend has it the early Spanish and Portuguese conquerors of the 16th century acquired a variety of beautiful silver objects from the Guaraní tribes down the Rio de La Plata (a.k.a. Silver River)…
Flags swirl, banners fly, balloons reach high into the clear Buenos Aires sky. The communal voice of 50,000 of Argentina’s most fanatic fans overwhelm Boca Junior’s Bombonera stadium. Shirts are swung, songs screamed out. Frenzied fans let off fire crackers and fireworks. On the east stand drums beat and horns blast, while above them the outnumbered enemy, dressed in the red and white jerseys of River Plate, try their best to drown out the Boca crowd.
If you’re new to Argentina and worried about your Spanish language skills, don’t panic – you can communicate with the locals without making a sound. Everyone knows actions speak louder than words, but nowhere is this truer than in Argentina, where the way you touch your elbow means the difference between telling someone they’re stingy and telling them you’re definitely not happy…
Fileteado is as porteño as a flock of riled-up Boca fans, although perhaps a little more sedate. It is a form of decorative art that originally started out adorning wagons in Buenos Aires in the early 20th century, painted by the Italian immigrants who worked in the wagon factories. Soon, it began to appear on trucks and buses and can now be seen everywhere from shop windows to metal plates sold at market stalls to giant advertising billboards looming over Avenida 9 de Julio.