La Boca

Painted corrugated iron, murals on every wall, and the loudest football ground in Argentina.

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🏛️ La Boca Essentials

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Best Time: Daytime

Go in daylight and leave before dusk

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Allow 2 to 3 Hours

Caminito, the murals, and the ground

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Guided First Time

Free walking tours run from the centre

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Getting There: Taxi or Tour

Not a walk from the centre

🧭 Why Visit

We went twice, once on a walking tour and once on our own, and it is worth both. Caminito is the postcard and it is genuinely as bright as the photographs suggest, but the murals a few streets back are the better half of the neighbourhood. Go in daylight, go with a guide the first time, and give La Bombonera ten minutes even if football means nothing to you.

🏛️ A Little History

This was the port, and the people who built it came off boats from Genoa. They roofed and clad their houses in corrugated iron left over from the shipyards and painted it with whatever the yards had spare, which is why no two walls match. In 1882 the neighbourhood declared itself an independent republic and sent the flag to the president, which tells you most of what you need to know about La Boca.

💡 Did You Know?

Caminito takes its name from a tango written in 1926, and the street was a disused railway cutting until a local painter, Benito Quinquela Martin, turned it into an open-air museum in the 1950s. His work is all over the neighbourhood and the colour scheme is essentially his.

The painted street

Caminito

Corrugated iron painted in whatever the shipyards had left over, which is the story everyone tells and which happens to be true.

A brightly painted corner building at Caminito with an Argentine flag, La Boca.
The CornerThe most photographed building in La Boca, and an Argentine flag hanging off it for good measure.
A painted facade at Caminito carrying the street's name in large letters.
CaminitoThe street takes its name from a tango, and the sign says so in letters a foot high.
Painted corrugated block facades in blue, yellow and red under deep blue sky.
Block ColourWhole facades in flat blue, yellow and red, with a sky behind them that does not soften anything.
Painted houses above a market square with red umbrellas at Caminito.
Under the UmbrellasThe square below the houses fills with stalls and red umbrellas and stays that way all afternoon.
Stacked painted balconies with figures leaning out at Caminito, La Boca.
The BalconiesPainted figures lean out of the upper balconies as though the street had cast itself.
A painted external staircase across a red, yellow and blue facade in La Boca.
The StaircaseRed against yellow against blue, with an outside stair climbing across all three.
On every wall

The Murals

The neighbourhood paints its own history on itself: the docks, the work, the football, the republic it once declared.

A ceramic tile mural of dockworkers on a green wall in La Boca.
The DockworkersA ceramic tile mural on a green wall showing the port that made this neighbourhood, back when it was work rather than a view.
A mural reading Republica de La Boca with a crest on a wall in Buenos Aires.
Republica de La BocaLa Boca declared itself an independent republic in 1882 and sent the flag to the president. The neighbourhood has never entirely dropped the joke.
A painted relief mural of workers carrying an injured man with furnaces behind.
Hands and FireA relief mural in gold and blue: two workers carrying a third, with the furnaces behind them.
A bus painted with murals and Argentine colours parked in a La Boca street.
The BusEven the parked bus is painted, and the face on the side needs no caption anywhere in this city.
Boca Juniors

La Bombonera

The stadium sits four blocks from Caminito and the blue and yellow does not let up for a moment.

The curved blue and yellow exterior of La Bombonera stadium with the Boca Juniors crest.
Blue and YellowThe stand curves away in the club's colours with the crest set into it, and the ground is called the chocolate box for the shape.
A Boca Juniors hoarding with the club crest beside La Bombonera stadium.
Around the GroundThe streets around the stadium are club property in every sense, hoardings included.

Live Prices & Availability

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Getting There & Around

  • Take a taxi or a tour rather than walking in, and stay on the visited streets
  • It pairs well with San Telmo on the same day, and the two are close

Local Know-How

  • The tango dancers outside the restaurants expect a tip if you photograph them
  • Walk two streets back from Caminito for the murals, which almost nobody does

Frequently Asked Questions

Is La Boca safe?
The tourist streets around Caminito and the stadium are busy and fine in daylight. Beyond them it is a working neighbourhood that does not want visitors wandering through it. Go by day, go with a guide the first time, and do not stray.
Why are the houses painted like that?
Genoese dock workers clad their houses in leftover corrugated iron from the shipyards and painted them with leftover marine paint, a wall at a time as it came. The artist Benito Quinquela Martin later made the scheme deliberate.
Can I get into La Bombonera?
The stadium runs tours and has a museum, and match tickets are hard to come by independently. Even from outside the blue and yellow is unmistakable.
Is Caminito a tourist trap?
Frankly, yes, and it is still worth seeing. Buy nothing, walk the length of it, then go and find the murals that the coaches do not stop for.

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