[22] Aragonese archives record that Catalan missionaries and Jesuits arriving in Cagliari (Sardinia) under the Crown of Aragon, after its capture from the Pisans in 1324, established their headquarters on top of a hill that overlooked the city.

In 1882, after conducting extensive research in Spanish archives, Argentine merchant Eduardo Madero ultimately concluded that the name was instead closely linked with the devotion of the sailors to Our Lady of Buen Ayre.

[3] Sensing these feelings, Charles III of Spain progressively eased the trade restrictions before finally declaring Buenos Aires an open port in the late 18th century.

This event started the Argentine War of Independence, and many armies left Buenos Aires to fight the diverse strongholds of royalist resistance, with varying levels of success.

People ignored public-health campaigns to limit the spread of contagious diseases, such as the prohibition of spitting on the streets, the strict guidelines to care for infants and young children, and quarantines that separated families from ill loved ones.

[33] In addition to the wealth generated by customs duties and Argentine foreign trade in general, as well as the existence of fertile pampas, railroad development in the second half of the 19th century increased the economic power of Buenos Aires as raw materials flowed into its factories.

The March 1976 coup, led by General Jorge Videla, only escalated this conflict; the "Dirty War" resulted in 30,000 desaparecidos (people kidnapped and killed by the military during the years of the junta).

Another explosion, on 18 July 1994, destroyed a building housing several Jewish organizations, killing 85 and injuring many more, these incidents marked the beginning of Middle Eastern terrorism to South America.

Following a 1993 agreement, the Argentine Constitution was amended to give Buenos Aires autonomy and rescinding, among other things, the president's right to appoint the city's mayor (as had been the case since 1880).

De la Rúa's successor, Aníbal Ibarra, won two popular elections, but was impeached (and ultimately deposed on 6 March 2006) as a result of the fire at the República Cromagnon nightclub.

[53] However, most heat waves are of short duration (less than a week) and are followed by the passage of the cold, dry Pampero wind which brings violent and intense thunderstorms followed by cooler temperatures.

[85][86] Unrestricted waves of European immigrants to Argentina starting in the mid-19th century significantly increased the country's population, even causing the number of porteños to triple between 1887 and 1915 from 500,000 to 1.5 million.

[87] Other significant European origins include French, Portuguese, German, Irish, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, Greek, Czech, Albanian, Croatian, Slovenian, Dutch, Russian, Serbian, English, Scottish, Slovak, Hungarian and Bulgarian.

The University of Buenos Aires, one of the top learning institutions in South America, has produced five Nobel Prize winners and provides taxpayer-funded education for students from all around the globe.

In April 2024, thousands of protesters, including professors and students, gathered on the streets of Buenos Aires and other cities to demand President Javier Milei increased funding for higher education.

Before 2011, due to the Argentine peso's favorable exchange rate, its shopping centers such as Alto Palermo, Paseo Alcorta, Patio Bullrich, Abasto de Buenos Aires and Galerías Pacífico were frequently visited by tourists.

According to data released by Moovit in July 2017, the average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Buenos Aires, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 79 min.

[136] Buenos Aires is based on a rectangular grid pattern, save for natural barriers or the relatively rare developments explicitly designed otherwise (most notably, the Parque Chas neighborhood).

[169] Tax collection related to the port has caused many political problems in the past, including a conflict in 2008 that led to protests and a strike in the agricultural sector after the government raised export tariffs.

[193][194] The city's turbulent modern political history has "bred an intense sense of expression in porteños", and urban art has been used to depict these stories and as a means of protest.

[184] Murals and graffiti are so common that they are considered "an everyday occurrence," and have become part of the urban landscape of barrios such as Palermo, Villa Urquiza, Coghlan and San Telmo.

[197][198] Despite its short urban history, Buenos Aires has an abundant literary production; its mythical-literary network "has grown at the same rate at which the streets of the city earned its shores to the pampas and buildings stretched its shadow on the curb.

"[199] During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, culture boomed along with the economy and the city emerged as a literary capital and the seat of South America's most powerful publishing industry,[200] and "even if the economic path grew rocky, ordinary Argentines embraced and stuck to the habit of reading.

"[201] By the 1930s, Buenos Aires was the undisputed literary capital of the Spanish-speaking world, with Victoria Ocampo founding the highly influential Sur magazine—which dominated Spanish-language literature for thirty years—[202] and the arrival of prominent Spanish writers and editors who were escaping the civil war.

[207] As a result of the growth and commercial prosperity of the city in the late 18th century, theater became a vital force in Argentine musical life, offering Italian and French operas and Spanish zarzuelas.

[207] A nationalist trend that drew from Argentine traditions, literature and folk music was an important force during the 19th century, including composers Alberto Williams, Julián Aguirre, Arturo Berutti and Felipe Boero.

[214] Every year, the city hosts the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema (BAFICI), which, in its 2015 edition, featured 412 films from 37 countries, and an attendance of 380 thousand people.

The simplicity of the Rioplatense baroque style is evident in Buenos Aires through the works of Italian architects such as André Blanqui and Antonio Masella, in the churches of San Ignacio, Nuestra Señora del Pilar, the Cathedral and the Cabildo.

In 1912, the Basilica del Santisimo Sacramento was opened to the public; its construction was funded by the generous donation of Argentine philanthropist Mercedes Castellanos de Anchorena, a member of Argentina's most prominent family.

With extremely high-grade decorations in its interior, the magnificent Mutin-Cavaillé coll organ (the biggest ever installed in an Argentine church with more than four thousand tubes and four manuals) presided the nave.