Almagro & Abasto
15´ away from downtown
The True Barrio Experience
Located in the geographical heart of the city, these neighborhoods were urbanized at the beginning of the XX century, becoming traditional middle class residential areas as well as important places for tango history and the contemporary “milongas” circuit.
Both Almagro and Abasto could be considered places out of the tourism beaten track where the porteña daily life remains untouched.
Almagro lands used to be an agricultural area 150 years ago, but at the turn of the century it rapidly became part of the city, receiving big influxes of Italians and people from the Basque region of Spain who migrated before and in between world wars. Almagro has never lacked personality or constrasts, in different points of its history you could have found factories and residential áreas, slaughter houses and first division football clubs, circus and political enclaves and tango and poetry circles, located all in the same area, a few blocks away from each other.
Nowadays Almagro has adopted a little more homogeneous style, mainly composed of a busy commercial center with both hustle and bustle and good number of high-rise apartment buildings.
Some of the attractions of the area are: the Flower Market on Acuña de Figueroa (one of the biggest in the world), the Sunday book faire on Plaza Almagro, and the quintessential Buenos Aires Café “Las Violetas”, founded in 1884.
To be or not to be..
Properly speaking Abasto is not an official neighborhood, located between Almagro and Balvanera, this particular area (the blocks surrounding the Mercado de Abasto) had progressively created an identity of its own, although it does not have a legislative recognition. However, popular culture authorizes this differentiation.
The neighborhood’s centerpiece is the historic Mercado de Abasto, previously a massive fresh produce market and now a beautifully restored structure that houses the shopping mall called “El Abasto”.
Nearby, it can be found one of the city’s favorite alternative theater spaces and cultural centers, the undefinable “Ciudad Cultural KONEX”. All year long it offers a wide variety of music shows and live performances.
This laid back barrio also has a pretty interesting multiculturalist landscape. Crowded with small eateries of different origins, such as Peruvian, Greek, Russian, or Hebrew, Abasto is one of the Bs As areas with greater religious and cultural diversity.
Finally, Abasto is a key place in Buenos Aires cultural history because it was the home the greatest tango singer of all times, Carlos Gardel. On Av Anchorena is located the “Museo Casa Carlos Gardel”, former residence of the tango legend.