Cobbles, antiques and tango
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Cobbled streets, colonial houses, antique dealers and old cafés: San Telmo is Buenos Aires’s oldest district. On Sundays, the Defensa Street fair stretches for kilometres, and couples dance tango on Plaza Dorrego.
Home to wealthy families until the 1871 yellow fever epidemic, San Telmo was then abandoned by the elite, who moved north. Its mansions became “conventillos”, shared tenements for immigrants, where tango took shape.
