Photo: McKay Savage from London, UK (CC BY 2.0)
A self-guided audio walk from the political heart of Buenos Aires south into San Telmo. It starts in the Plaza de Mayo, where the city was founded for the second time in 1580, where aircraft bombed the crowded square in June 1955, and where the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have walked every Thursday since April 1977; then the Casa Rosada, the Metropolitan Cathedral with the mausoleum of General San Martín, the Cabildo where the open cabildo of 22 May 1810 met, and Café Tortoni on the Avenida de Mayo. South of the square come the Jesuit Manzana de las Luces and the church of San Ignacio, begun in 1686, the Franciscan basilica with Dante and Columbus on its façade, and Santo Domingo, where British troops were besieged in 1807. In San Telmo: the brick tunnels of El Zanjón de Granados, the 1897 iron-and-glass market, Plaza Dorrego and its Sunday fair, the parish church of San Pedro González Telmo, the blue-domed Russian Orthodox cathedral and Parque Lezama, with the National Historical Museum.
15 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 260 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 49 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Plaza de Mayo, Casa Rosada, Metropolitan Cathedral of Buenos Aires, Cabildo de Buenos Aires, Café Tortoni and the Avenida de Mayo.
Manzana de las Luces, Iglesia de San Ignacio de Loyola, Basílica de San Francisco, Basílica de Santo Domingo.
El Zanjón de Granados, Mercado de San Telmo, Plaza Dorrego, Iglesia de San Pedro González Telmo, Catedral ortodoxa rusa de la Santísima Trinidad, Parque Lezama and the National Historical Museum.
The square where Argentines come to be heard, bombed in June 1955, and walked every Thursday by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo since 1977.
The cathedral with a twelve-column portico, the mausoleum of General San Martín and the church Jorge Mario Bergoglio served before he became Pope Francis.
The colonial council house where the open cabildo of 22 May 1810 met; five of its original eleven arches survive.
The coffeehouse of writers and musicians, with its 1898 façade on the new avenue and a table kept in Carlos Gardel's memory.
A nineteenth-century house above the brick tunnels and cisterns that once carried a stream to the Río de la Plata.
The blue-domed Russian Orthodox cathedral, begun in 1898 on plans from the architect of the Holy Synod, with a Ukrainian ceramic iconostasis.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 15 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 15 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Buenos Aires — Plaza de Mayo and San Telmo, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
15 narration points, including Plaza de Mayo, Casa Rosada, Metropolitan Cathedral of Buenos Aires, Cabildo de Buenos Aires and Manzana de las Luces. That is about 31 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~3 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 15 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.