The tour of the Federal Police Museum in Buenos Aires starts as you’d pretty much expect. We are led in to the first room, where various police uniforms are displayed, dating back from as far as 1790. Then we browse at the vast collection of police badges on display, not only from Argentina, but from all around the world. This is all very impressive, but there has to be something more interesting…

Buenos Aires is a city obsessed with memory. One of it’s biggest tourist attractions is a cemetery, the remembrance of history is a definitive political issue, and psychoanalysis is more common here than anywhere else in the world.

A walk down Armenia in Palermo can take you to the chicest of chic fashion shops, where extraordinary garments at extraordinary prices are pored over by hopelessly fashionable porteños. Walk further towards Av. Córdoba, however, and something begins to look different.

If it’s not named after a country or a date, the chances are the Buenos Aires street you’re walking along is named in honour of an individual whose story has contributed significantly to the nation’s rich past…

Buenos Aires – a city so good they founded it twice. Both times, it was founded by Spanish explorers, most recently in 1580, and first time around in 1536 – but the remains were never discovered of the first settlement. That is, not until 1985 when an Argentine private company purchased a 19th century property in San Telmo and accidentally uncovered what is now considered to be the most important archaeological site of the city.

It is often said that every picture tells a story and the same can be said of Buenos Aires’ street names. Amongst the ubiquitous streets named after generals and presidents are such exotic names as Maipú and Chacabuco. But what is their significance?

Towering over Avenida de Mayo stands El Palacio Barolo, one of the most structurally and symbolically interesting buildings in Buenos Aires. Financed by Italian-born cotton-tycoon Luís Barolo and designed by architect Mario Palanti, the first porteño skyscraper, 22 storeys high, was opened on 7th July 1923 as an enterprise renting out its 400 offices to the businesses of Buenos Aires.

Want to learn more about Argentina? All you need is a pair of comfortable shoes. For, as the following six streets demonstrate, discovering Argentina’s past is as easy as walking down the street.

As I approached the closed door, I could make out the sounds of stomping and even the occasional “Yee-haw!” When I opened the door to the dance classroom, men and women were lined up in rows, bending their knees and skilfully matching their taping feet to the gig playing on a nearby stereo system.

At midnight each year on 24th May crowds gather in front of the city’s historic cabildo on the eve of the anniversary of one of the most important events in Argentine history. The claiming of power in Buenos Aires by the local creole population (Spaniards born in the Americas) on 25th May 1810, in what became known as the ‘May Revolution’, set in motion a series of events that culminated in independence from Spain on 9th July 1816.