Argentina

A city built by people who arrived by ship and set about recreating what they had left. Parisian boulevards, Italian kitchens, a cemetery of marble streets, and tango — invented in the port district by immigrants with nothing, now danced on the pavement for anyone who stops.

In La Boca the tenement walls were painted with whatever ship's paint was left over, which is why the poorest quarter is the most photographed. Buenos Aires stays up late, eats at eleven, and has made a national art form out of longing for somewhere else.