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Palermo
Palermo is a social hub of Buenos Aires ...at weekends Plaza Serrano is packed out as local designers and boutiques set up stalls and racks in the various nightclubs around the plaza..
Images of Palermo
Expect: Style, nightlife and high-class cuisine.
Pack: Money and heels.
Palermo
Palermo is the thumping centre of Buenos Aires’ nightlife. All night, every night, throngs of well-dressed revellers gather outside its colourful collection of top-end restaurants, funky bars and entrancing clubs. Porteños will tell you that only three years ago none of this was there. Back then, the story goes, Palermo Viejo was slow and rundown, whilst it neighbour, Palermo Chico, was wealthy and refined. Today, however, this is history (and pretty dull history at that). Palermo Viejo, is now colloquially split into two; the spicy Palermo Soho, with its trendy bars and clubs, and the saucy Palermo Hollywood, with its sumptuous selection of eateries. Palermo Chico is still very much old money and is in general doesn't have the same appeal for the young travelling type.
However, Palermo is not all about grinding to floor-shaking reggaeton and whacking back 60 peso steaks – although neither should be missed. This leafy barrio is really a quiet residential area and during the day a walk through its tree-lined streets takes you passed aromatic bakeries and little grocery stores. Palermo has a high number of expats, particularly from the United States, and it is not hard to see why. It is a chilled, residential area in the heart of the city with the cream of the city’s nightlife and culinary options.
Buenos Aires’ main parks are also situated here enabling a much needed escape from the intense rush and polluted air of this crazy city. You often don’t realise quite how much you need that lush greenery and (slightly) cleaner air until you’re actually there, when it’s suddenly very hard to leave. But leave you must, because come midnight the park transforms into an outdoor brothel for transsexual prostitutes. The “ladyboy park” is a bizarre phenomenon, the result of a government legislation passed in 2005 that forbade prostitutes from offering their services within 200 metres of any school, church or residential building. This cancelled out pretty much everywhere in the city with the (unforeseen) result that the prostitutes, most of them transsexual, moved to Bosques de Palermo (Palermo Woods). Here they are tolerated as long as they scram come daylight.
Palermo is also well known for its shopping (where as Buenos Aires in general isn’t) and at weekends Plaza Serrano is packed out as local designers and boutiques set up stalls and racks in the various nightclubs that surround the plaza. Here you can find some great bargains and the stuff is edgier and less pricey than what you will generally find in Recoleta or Micro Centro.
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