Buenos Aires · AR

Caminito

Caminito is Buenos Aires' most famously colourful lane: a 150-metre pedestrian street museum in the portside barrio of La Boca, where corrugated-tin tenement houses are painted in bold, mismatched hues and sculptures by Argentine artists line the cobblestones. Part open-air gallery, part living monument to the city's immigrant roots, it has become one of the most photographed places in the world. The lane traces an old stream bed that once fed the Riachuelo and later carried a railway branch to Ensenada. When the rails were abandoned, the corner fell into disrepair until the painter Benito Quinquela Martín—a local boy who owed everything to La Boca—helped neighbours turn it into a museum in 1959, naming it after the beloved tango "Caminito." Today that gamble has paid off: it's a signature stop on almost every visit to the capital.