Calle Museo Caminito and the Open-Air Conventillo Gallery

Why is it significant?

Step onto the uneven flagstones of Caminito, the most photographed, colorful, and joyful pedestrian street in South America.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Step onto the uneven flagstones of Caminito, the most photographed, colorful, and joyful pedestrian street in South America. Stretching just one hundred and fifty meters in an elegant S-curve, this magical walkway follows the bed of a colonial natural runoff creek known as the Arroyo Puntin, which drained pampean rains into the Riachuelo. In 1866, the creek was filled to lay railway tracks for the Ensenada train, but when the line was abandoned in 1920, the trench degenerated into a muddy neighborhood landfill known locally as the swamp.

Look above the shopfronts at the colorful walls: twenty-one commemorative bronze reliefs and stone sculptures by leading Argentine artists are mounted directly onto the facades.

In the early 1950s, Benito Quinquela Martín and a dedicated group of neighborhood neighbors resolved to rescue the abandoned dump. They cleared the trash, paved the corridor with flagstones, and recruited local residents to paint their sheet-iron conventillos in joyous shades of canary yellow, sky blue, crimson, and lavender. In 1959, the street was officially christened Caminito in honor of the world-famous 1926 tango composed by Juan de Dios Filiberto with lyrics by Gabino Coria Peñaloza: Little path that time has erased, together one day we saw each other pass. Today, Caminito is a bustling open-air art salon where master painters display landscapes on outdoor easels, street buskers play bandoneons, and professional tango couples in fedoras and sequined dresses execute lightning-fast cortes and quebradas on wooden platforms.

Wandering among the multi-hued balconies hung with laundry while the nostalgic chords of Filiberto's tango float on the river breeze is pure Buenos Aires magic. It is a living open-air museum where popular art and maritime history meet.

Walk west to the end of Caminito and cross Avenida Pedro de Mendoza to Fundación Proa.