That’s how one of our tour guides described Buenos Aires’ architectural heritage. The city is a dazzling wonderland of architectural styles, and some of them – the French revival buildings, for instance – are not so much authentic (how could they be, seeing as how they’re not in France) as they are eye-poppingly, over-the-top gaudy — a kick to look at and to walk through.

Buenos Aires retains very little of its colonial heritage (one notable exception is Our Lady of Pilar church next to La Recoleta cemetery, built in the early 1700s). That’s because the city went through a