Puerto Madero, Puente de la Mujer, and Costanera Sur Reserve

Just three blocks east of Plaza de Mayo and the Casa Rosada, the city grid gives way to four long water basins lined with restored 19th-century brick warehouses and contemporary glass towers. Puerto Madero, named after merchant Eduardo Madero, whose port master plan was approved in 1882 and constructed between 1887 and 1897, became obsolete within a decade as ocean freighters grew too large for its lock system. Left derelict for much of the 20th century, the 170-hectare docklands were transformed from 1989 onwards into a pedestrian waterfront district where every street is named after a notable Latin American woman.

Puente de la Mujer (2001) and Historic Museum Ships

Spanning Dique 3 (Dock 3) at the centre of the waterfront is the Puente de la Mujer ("Woman's Bridge"), inaugurated in December 2001 as Spanish architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava's first structure in Latin America. Measuring 170 metres in length and 6.20 metres in width and weighing 800 tonnes, the white steel footbridge features a 39-metre forward-leaning cantilever mast whose suspension cables evoke the silhouette of a couple dancing the tango; its central 102.5-metre span rotates 90 degrees on a central pylon to let tall-masted vessels pass through the docks. Moored along Dique 3 and Dique 4 sit two historic Argentine Navy museum vessels open to visitors: the 1897 training frigate ARA Presidente Sarmiento and the 1874 gunboat corvette ARA Uruguay, which rescued Otto Nordenskjöld's stranded Swedish Antarctic Expedition in 1903.

Fortabat Art Collection and Costanera Sur Promenade

At the northern end of Dique 4 (Olga Cossettini 141), the concrete-and-glass Colección de Arte Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, designed by Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly and opened in 2008, exhibits Argentine and international paintings beneath curved roof louvres that track the sun. On the eastern side of the docks along Avenida Tristán Achával Rodríguez runs the historic Costanera Sur promenade, opened in 1918 as a municipal riverside resort and anchored by Tucumán-born sculptor Lola Mora's 1903 white marble Fuente de las Nereidas (Fountain of the Nereids).

Reserva Ecológica Costanera Sur (350 Hectares)

Extending east from the Costanera Sur boulevard to the open waters of the Río de la Plata is the 3.5-square-kilometre (865-acre) Costanera Sur Ecological Reserve. Created accidentally in the late 1970s and early 1980s when river silt and demolition rubble from downtown highway projects formed polders that were rapidly colonised by native Paraná river seeds, the tract was declared a protected nature reserve in 1986 and a Ramsar wetland site in 2005. Free gravel walking and cycling paths wind past willow woods, pampas cortadera grass, and freshwater lagoons inhabited by more than 300 bird species, coypu, and freshwater turtles, offering wide views back across the Puerto Madero skyline.