The story
As you walk down this wide, leafy stretch of Buenos Aires, you might feel the city’s usual rush start to soften into something greener and more open. This is Avenida Presidente Sarmiento, and if you look up, you’ll see the heavy, dappled shade of plane trees that seem to stretch on forever. But these wasn't always the trees that lived here. In the late 1800s, this road was lined with hundreds of tropical palms. They were supposed to be symbols of a grand, modern future, but they didn’t take well to the soil. As they withered, leaving only tall, bare trunks with a few dry leaves on top, the locals jokingly called this the Avenue of the Brooms.
The man who insisted on those palms was the same man the street is named after: Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. He was the seventh president of Argentina, serving from 1868 to 1874, but he was far more than a politician. He was a writer, a diplomat, and a tireless educator. He is often called the Father of the Classroom because he founded hundreds of schools, believing that a country’s strength lived in the minds of its citizens. He was a man of fierce intellect and even fiercer rivalries.
In fact, the very ground you are walking on is a trophy of one of those rivalries. This entire area, the Parque Tres de Febrero, used to be the private estate of Sarmiento’s political enemy, the governor Juan Manuel de Rosas. After Rosas was defeated in 1852, Sarmiento pushed to turn his rival’s private land into a public park for everyone to enjoy. He wanted Buenos Aires to have a green lung, much like the Bois de Boulogne in Paris or Central Park in New York. By 1879, the city had officially placed his name on the maps for this central artery.
Today, this avenue is the spine of the Palermo neighborhood’s park system. It connects the bustling Plaza Italia to the riverside at Costanera Norte. As you walk, you pass the Ecoparque, which was the city’s historic zoo for over a century, and the Japanese Garden tucked just to the side. Further down, you’ll see one of the most distinctive buildings in the city: the Galileo Galilei Planetarium, which looks like a silver UFO that has gently landed on the grass.
The street itself is a bridge between the wildness of the parks and the elegance of the city’s monuments. At the intersection with Avenida del Libertador, keep an eye out for a large bronze statue of Sarmiento himself. It was created by the famous French sculptor Auguste Rodin. When it was unveiled in 1900, people actually protested because they didn't think it looked enough like him, but today it stands as a permanent watchman over the forest he helped create.
Before you keep moving, look for one of those plane trees nearby and notice the way its bark peels off in patches of gray, green, and cream. Sarmiento wanted this to be a place of study and nature, so as you walk, see if you can spot a single bird or a tree you haven’t seen before in the city center.