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Map of Buenos Aires
An endless grid on the bank of a river so wide it looks like the sea. Buenos Aires is drawn block by block, and the map shows how its avenues cut through it and how it stops dead at the docks.
What you see on the map
The grid. Juan de Garay laid out a grid of square blocks, the cuadras, in 1580, and the city kept repeating it for four centuries. Drawn as blocks, with their outline, it is an almost perfect pattern.
Avenida 9 de Julio. One of the widest avenues in the world crosses the centre from north to south, with the Obelisk in the Plaza de la República. On the map it is a band that splits the grid in two.
Plaza de Mayo and Avenida de Mayo. The founding square, with the Casa Rosada, and the avenue linking it to Congress, to the west. The Diagonal Norte and Diagonal Sur leave it at an angle and break the grid.
Puerto Madero and the river. The four docks of the old port, long and parallel, and beyond them the Ecological Reserve, reclaimed from the Río de la Plata. The water is filled with shore lines.
Which scale and paper suit it
1:25,000 on a 30 cm square, as in the picture, covers 7 km: from Retiro to San Telmo and from Congress to the river. Every block has its outline, so the grid reads even where few buildings are drawn.
1:10,000 on A3 goes down to a neighbourhood: San Telmo with its market, or Recoleta with its cemetery, a miniature city with streets of its own.
A 50 × 70 poster at 1:40,000 takes in the city from the General Paz ring road to the river: the grid reaches every edge.
Make it yours
Open the example and move the frame: Palermo, with its woods and lakes, or La Boca and the Riachuelo, to the south, deserve a map of their own.
Change all the colours at once with a theme (black ink, sepia, coral, night, blueprint) and download it as PNG. With a free account, also element by element, at 600 dpi, as vector PDF and as SVG.
