Palermo isn’t one place. It’s many. At nearly 16 square kilometres it’s the largest neighbourhood in Buenos Aires — it fills the whole of Comuna 14 on its own — and inside that sprawl sit worlds that barely speak to one another. A cobbled street lined with design boutiques; a corridor of grill houses and bars that never quite sleeps; a park of four lakes where the city lowers its voice. We live here, and it still surprises us.
This is our complete guide to the things to do in Palermo: the map of the whole neighbourhood, with its sub-districts, its table, its nightlife and its green. Each section opens a door; when you’re ready to step through, we’ll take you to the detailed guide we’ve written for each one.
The neighbourhoods within Palermo
The first thing worth understanding is that “going to Palermo” doesn’t say much. The neighbourhood breaks into areas with names of their own — a few official, most not — and each has its own character. These are the ones you’ll walk most.
Palermo Soho
The heart of porteño design. Cobbled, tree-shaded streets around Plaza Serrano, with independent boutiques, design studios and one of the densest concentrations of restaurants in the city. By day you wander without hurry; by night it fills up. We walk it in full in our guide to Palermo Soho.
Palermo Hollywood
Across the railway and Avenida Juan B. Justo, Hollywood took its name from the film and television production houses that settled here. Today it’s chef-driven cooking, speciality coffee and a nightlife a touch more relaxed than Soho’s — and it’s where we live. We tell its whole story in our guide to Palermo Hollywood.
Palermo Chico
Palermo at its most serene and stately, also known as Barrio Parque. Curving streets that coil like a maze, 1920s mansions, embassies and, on Avenida Figueroa Alcorta, the MALBA. You come here to walk slowly and look up at façades. We take you through its corners in our guide to Palermo Chico.
Las Cañitas
Barely twenty blocks at the northern edge of the neighbourhood, arranged around Báez street — its dining and nightlife spine. Traditional grill houses sit beside cocktail bars and speciality cafés, and at the far end rises the Campo Argentino de Polo, host to international tournaments. A mini-Palermo within Palermo. Its own guide is on the way.
A neighbour that isn’t Palermo: Villa Crespo
Worth clearing up, because it causes confusion: Villa Crespo, pressed against Palermo Soho along Avenida Córdoba, is not Palermo. The “Palermo Queens” nickname is an estate-agent invention, not a fact of geography. It’s a neighbourhood in its own right — outlet shops, young bars, real street life — and well worth a visit; but it’s Palermo’s neighbour, not its extension.
Where to eat in Palermo
If Buenos Aires is one of the region’s great food cities, Palermo is its main table. Here the internationally awarded grill house sits alongside starred chef’s cooking and the neighbourhood trattoria that has cooked the same way for fifty years.
We gather the names in the red guide — and the story behind each — in our pick of the Michelin-starred restaurants in Palermo. Two we’d send you to first: the fire-driven parrilla of Don Julio and the Peruvian kitchen of La Mar. And if hand-rolled pasta is what you’re after, we tell you where to find it in our guide to the Italian pasta restaurants near the hotel.
Where to drink
Palermo’s nightlife isn’t improvised; it’s chosen. Hidden cocktail bars behind unmarked doors, natural-wine rooms, terraces that face the sunset. We’ve put together a round of our favourites — the ones we’d recommend to a friend arriving for the first time — in our guide to the best bars in Palermo.
Green space: the Bosques de Palermo
The city’s lung lives here. Parque Tres de Febrero — which everyone simply calls the Bosques de Palermo — spreads its groves, its four lakes and its paths across much of the neighbourhood. Its Rosedal, awarded by the World Federation of Rose Societies in 2012, blooms with thousands of rose bushes; beside it, the Japanese Garden offers its quiet; and a few blocks on, the Galileo Galilei Planetarium, the Botanical Garden and the Ecoparque round out the green. We tell you how to walk it in our guide to the Bosques de Palermo.
Art and culture
On Avenida Figueroa Alcorta, at the edge of Palermo Chico, the MALBA holds one of the most important collections of Latin American art on the continent. It’s our first cultural recommendation in the neighbourhood, and we go into it in our piece on the MALBA. Palermo’s galleries deserve a chapter of their own; we’re writing it.
Palermo with children
Palermo is, though few say so, one of the easier neighbourhoods to travel with children: parks to run in, the planetarium, gardens, short distances. We’ve gathered plans that hold up against boredom in our guide to family-friendly activities in Buenos Aires.
Getting there and around
Palermo is well connected. Aeroparque Jorge Newbery, the domestic airport, is minutes away along the Costanera; Ezeiza, the international one, is further out — we explain both routes in our guide to the Buenos Aires airports. Within the neighbourhood, the Subte (the D line, Plaza Italia station) cuts across it, but the best advice is the simplest: walk. Palermo is understood on foot. For a longer loop, our self-guided bike route from Palermo Hollywood to Recoleta is a fine way to take it in.
Where to stay in Palermo
Choosing where to sleep in Palermo is, in large part, choosing which version of the neighbourhood you want to live in: the buzz of Soho, the calm of Chico, the nights of Las Cañitas. We help you decide in our guide to where to stay in Palermo. We’re a small hotel in Palermo Hollywood — steps from the Movistar Arena, as we explain in this piece — built as a base within the city, not a refuge from it. From our door, almost everything in this guide is within walking distance.
Palermo isn’t exhausted in a single visit; we walk it every day and still find new corners. Use this guide as a starting point, and let the neighbourhood do the rest.