Buenos Aires has been having an identity crisis for two hundred years and has wisely decided to embrace it. The boulevards of Palermo resemble Paris, the architecture of Recoleta resembles Vienna, the café culture is thoroughly Italian — and yet it is unmistakably South American in ways the European comparison cannot account for: the political murals, the asado culture, the tango invented not in Paris but in the conventillos of La Boca by immigrants who had nothing but music and each other. Buenos Aires contains all its contradictions simultaneously and makes them look effortless, which is the most Buenos Aires thing about it.

The Neighbourhoods: Pick Your Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is a city of barrios — distinct neighbourhoods each with their own character — and the first decision any visitor makes is which Buenos Aires they want to inhabit. Palermo is the barrio of the creative class, the restaurants and wine bars and boutiques of Palermo Soho and Hollywood, the parks and lakes of Palermo proper. Recoleta is the barrio of French-influenced grandeur, the famous cemetery where Eva Perón is buried among the mausoleums of Argentina’s elite (it is the most-visited cemetery in the world and justifies every superlative). San Telmo is the barrio of the antique market that takes over the main plaza every Sunday, the colonial architecture, and the milongas where tango is danced seriously by people for whom dancing is not a tourist activity. La Boca is the barrio of the Boca Juniors football stadium and the Caminito with its famous coloured houses — worth visiting, worth visiting briefly, worth not being distracted by the tourist infrastructure around Caminito to the exclusion of the actual neighbourhood.

Eating in Buenos Aires: The Priority the City Gets Right

The porteño relationship with food is approximately the same as their relationship with football — passionate, opinionated, and not subject to outside adjudication. Breakfast is medialunas, the Argentine croissant smaller and sweeter than the French version, eaten at a café counter with cortado coffee at any hour that suits. Lunch is a long affair or a quick one depending on the day, but never a sad sandwich at a desk. Dinner begins at nine at the earliest and at midnight if the occasion is social. The asado on Sunday — the ritual of the fire built from wood, the variety of cuts arranged by cooking time, the chimichurri made fresh that morning — is the meal around which the week organises itself, and the correct response when invited to one is to arrive on time (unusual for Buenos Aires) because the asador started the fire an hour before you were due.

The steak is the best single-ingredient argument for visiting. Order the bife de chorizo at any parrilla not adjacent to a tourist attraction. Punto (medium). Trust the process.

Tango: Where to See It Properly

The tourist tango show — dinner with dancers performing on a stage — exists and is fine and is not tango. Tango is the milonga, the dance hall where Porteños dance with each other from ten at night until four in the morning, where the cabeceo — the subtle nod that invites a partner onto the floor — is the only invitation that counts, and where the quality of dancing is determined by the connection between the partners rather than the spectacle they present to an audience. La Viruta in Palermo runs milongas every night. El Beso in the centre is for the serious dancers. The Nacional is for beginners who want to watch and then, carefully, participate. Go to at least one. Sit. Watch. Accept that you are observing something that cannot be fully explained and can only be partially understood by watching it, and that this is sufficient.

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Buenos Aires will feed you, dance for you, argue with you about football, and make you feel that the rest of the world has been slightly underperforming in the area of Sunday afternoons. Give it a week. It will give you a great deal more back.