Basking in the beauty of Buenos Aires: High art, fine food and almost losing my husband to a tango temptress in Argentina's capital.

New York is the Big Apple and New Orleans the Big Easy.
So it follows that Buenos Aires should be the Big Tango.
Pitch up at La Viruta – a dance hall in the Palermo district – at around 10pm, and you need not leave until 4am. After just one night, you realise that Buenos Aires is a city in thrall to tango. No wonder Argentina’s Pope Francis said that the dance had been one of the greatest pleasures of his youth.
City of lights: Buenos Aires - which translates loosely as 'Fair Winds' - is an attractive, arty city
City of lights: Buenos Aires - which translates loosely as 'Fair Winds' - is an attractive, arty city
Tango is thought to originate with the Italian immigrants who settled in Argentina during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Much of the capital’s architecture is redolent of the Europe they left behind: leafy boulevards and Belle Époque apartments.

    More than 40,000 Britons visit each year, most spending a few days in town before moving west to the pampas or south to Patagonia.
    But many are perfectly happy to stay put, dancing by night and exploring by day.
    It helps that the food and drink are sublime.
    La Boca Buenos Aires
    Tango couple
    Brushstrokes and dancing shoes: Argentina's arty side is visible in the city, with its love of tango always clear
    Beef comes straight from the grasslands and wine from the incomparable Mendoza region. Just remember not to book dinner at 8pm – unless you want to eat alone. Restaurants do not fill up until 10pm, and most stay open until 1am. The city can also be extraordinarily cheap - with approximately 14 Argentinian pesos to the pound, we found it hard to spend more than £20 a head.
    And yet, as we discovered during our week, there is so much more to this exhilarating city than tango and T-bone. With art to rival that of any European capital, Buenos Aires is one of the world’s great cultural cities, boasting no fewer than eight impressive galleries.
    Remarkably, this wealth of culture is a well-kept secret.
    Few outside the art world know that the National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA), for example, has an enviable collection of Degas and Cezanne.
    Show-stopper: The famous Caminito street in the Boca district of the city is awash with colour
    Show-stopper: The famous Caminito street in the Boca district of the city is awash with colour
    However, with the opening of a new exhibition at London’s Royal Academy, the secret is out.
    Radical Geometry, a selection of 20th century art from Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela, showcases the best South American modern art. You might not be immediately familiar with the names of Joaquin Torres Garcia, Jesus Soto and Carlos Cruz-Diez, but you will recognize their debt to modernism and to European masters such as Mondrian and Matisse.
    With Europe in turmoil during and after the Second World War, Buenos Aires became a magnet for creative types seeking artistic freedom. In Germany, the Nazi regime was persecuting not only Jews, but also those who espoused the avant-garde.
    As Dr Adrian Locke, exhibitions curator at the Royal Academy, says: “Many artists, many of them Jewish, crossed the Atlantic to find refuge here, creating an extraordinary dynamism. There was an atmosphere of freedom and invention.”
    Urban planning on a grand scale: Buenos Aires boasts the world's widest avenue, Avenida 9 de Julio
    Urban planning on a grand scale: Buenos Aires boasts the world's widest avenue, Avenida 9 de Julio
    Only New York, home to Jackson Pollock and Roy Lichtenstein, could rival Buenos Aires in its post-war artistic energy.
    For anyone thinking of a cultural break, Buenos Aires offers an alternative to Paris or Madrid. Its museums are delightfully uncrowded, and none of your favourite pictures will ever be out on loan.
    Because Argentina defaulted on its debt repayments in 2001, none of its national collection can ever leave the country for fear of being impounded. So Degas’s magnificent pastel of Two Dancers, for example, will always be waiting for you.
    The city can rival Europe not only in art, but also opera and ballet.
    The great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso crossed the Atlantic to perform at its world-famous Colon opera house in 1917, and it continues to attract the finest performers.
    On our last night, we returned to La Viruta, determined to tango to the very end.
    A splendid cityscape: Buenos Aires has its scruffy corners, but it is a city that never fails to excite
    A splendid cityscape: Buenos Aires has its scruffy corners, but it is a city that never fails to excite
    Having taken a couple of lessons in London, we felt rather confident: take four steps, pause and flick our heads with a flourish. We soon realised that Argentinian tango looks nothing like its rather weedy English cousin. Seeing our confusion, a young woman took pity on us.
    ‘It’s easy,’ Paola breathed, as she held my husband close. ‘It’s just like walking.’
    Under the spell of her Latin charms, he glided around the room. As for me, left dancing with a stranger, I felt I needed balancing wheels.
    So while he thought ‘Last Tango in Paris’, I felt more ‘My Left Foot’.
    Miraculously, we managed one circuit of the ballroom. A small triumph, but one large enough to convince us that we must return soon. But next time, we will pack our dancing shoes.

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