3 Best Sights in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Today, the River Plate is nowhere in sight, but the humming traffic circle that overlooks this underground museum behind the Casa Rosada was once on the waterfront. The brick vaults, pillars, and wooden pulley mechanisms are the remains of the 1845 Taylor Customs House and jetty discovered after being buried for almost a century. In honor of Argentina's 2010 bicentenary celebrations, the structure was restored and capped with a glass roof.

Formerly known as the Bicentenary Museum, each vault covers a portion of Argentina's political history, recalling it through artifacts (many are personal possessions of those who governed from the house overhead), paintings, photographs, film reels, and interactive screens. Temporary art exhibitions run on the other side of the museum courtyard.

The large glass structure in the center contains the star attraction: a 360-degree masterpiece by Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. When that house was demolished in the early 1990s, the mural was carefully removed in pieces, though it then languished in a shipping container for 17 years.

Eva Duarte de Perón, known as Evita, was the wife of populist president Juan Domingo Perón. Revered by working-class followers and despised by the Anglophile oligarchy, the Museo Evita shies from pop culture clichés and conveys facts about Evita's life and works. Exhibits include family photos that document Evita's humble origins, 1952 film footage showing hundreds of thousands of mourners lined up to view their idol's body, and mannequins wearing some of her fabulous designer outfits. The Evita myth can be baffling to the uninitiated, but excellent guided visits shed light on the phenomenon and are available in English for groups of 10 or more, but they must be arranged by email ([email protected]) in advance. A video chronicles the fate of Evita's cadaver after dying of cancer at age 33: embalmed by Perón, stolen by political opponents, and moved and hidden for 17 years before being returned to Argentina, where it now rests in Recoleta Cemetery. Knowledgeable staffers are on hand to answer questions. Book a table at the on-site restaurant, whose checkered floors and glossy black tables are as stylish as the lady herself.

What better place for the National History Museum than overlooking the spot where the city was supposedly founded? Once owned by entrepreneur and horticulturalist Gregorio Lezama, the beautiful chestnut-and-white Italianate mansion that houses it also did duty as a quarantine station during the San Telmo cholera and yellow-fever epidemics before it became a museum in 1922. Personal possessions and thoughtful explanations (in Spanish) chronicle the rise and fall of Argentina's liberator José de San Martín. Other galleries celebrate the heroes of independence and foreign forces' unsuccessful attempts to invade Argentina.