In the Caminito, the tourist street at the centre of La Boca, you’ll find a few bars and restaurants with grinning tango professionals ushering tourists up for a few tentative steps. It’s half-hearted though because the true cultural obsession here is expressed in the looming walls of La Bombonera, one of the world’s most atmospheric football stadia, and the place where the genius of Maradona always found its most appreciative audience.

Evita and Gardel died young, claimed by cancer and a Colombian plane crash respectively. Maradona is still alive, but the portenos don’t revere him any the less for that.

The souvenir shop opposite the stadium is awash with Maradona merchandise, one perennially popular item showing Maradona’s hand rising above Peter Shilton’s disbelieving grimace 20 years ago for the infamous goal against England in the World Cup quarter-final. The text cites Maradona’s line about that goal confirming the existence of a God who smiled on Argentina.

It’s worth walking around La Boca to get an understanding of working-class Buenos Aires. This was the traditional first stop for the immigrants who arrived in the 19th and 20th centuries, many of them from Genoa, and in parts La Boca resembles the Genoese hillside tenements. Many of the old tin shacks remain, painted in lurid multi-colours (tradition suggests locals begged leftover paint from visiting ships).

The pavements are raised against floods and rainstorms, giving the place the feel of Lower East Side New York in the 1960s.

In parts, just a couple of streets, La Boca has been gentrified. La Perla, the most famous La Boca bar, used to be a brothel. Now its prices are inflated and Bill Clinton drops in for a drink in its garishly picturesque surroundings. Walk away for a block or two though and La Boca’s edgy authenticity is restored.

Continued on page 2()As the forces of gentrification have yet to find anything to resist them, La Boca’s future is probably mapped out in the neighbouring barrio of San Telmo, once another teeming residential area, now visibly transforming into a funky, bohemian quarter of antiques shops, craft centres and designer garrets.

In the Plaza Dorrego Argentina’s fascination with the cow is a little too vividly underlined by ornaments fashioned from carved hooves, but the Mercado De San Telmo is now given over to antiques stores selling pricy furniture shipped over in the last centuries by the Europhile Argentinians.

Walking back into the centre through San Telmo, along the street of Defensa (named after a heroic defence of the city against a marauding party of British privateers), it’s worth investigating Argentina’s other secular religion, grilled beef, in the Parrilla 1880. This informal eaterie has a timeless, slightly tattered grace, with evocative period decorations and daunting slabs of meat cooked to your specifications.

It might not be around much longer. Wandering around this poetic and haunted city, there’s a sense of imminent and irresistible change. Part of it is beneficial, not least the gradual restoring of economic equilibrium and facing up to the heinous political crimes of the last century. Partly it’s a regrettable impulse to modernise without restraint.

These are the last days of the Bar Britanico, a La Boca institution, a cafe that cultivated chess, conversation and the occasional elegant argument. The presiding Galician family’s 40-year lease is expiring and they are heading back to La Coruna, unless a heartfelt local campaign can keep them in business.

The venerable Cafe Tortoni on Avenida De Mayo is still going strong, but has become a museum rather than a convivial meeting place, and the prices and austere formality put off anybody who wants to linger. Portenos moan that their city’s traditional cafe society is being destroyed.

At least one tradition is maintained. The sense of constant complaint is an appealing driving force of Buenos Aires. It’s in the supplicant crowds who used to air their grievances to Evita in the Plaza De Mayo, in the lyrics of every despondent tango, in the fevered appeals of seven generations of Boca Juniors fans in La Bombonera. Plaintiveness is in Buenos Aires’ blood.

Details: Exsus Travel Scotland (0131 476 6522, www.exsus.com) offers tailor-made trips to Argentina. A seven-night Buenos Aires package starts from £1,595 including five nights’ bed and breakfast at the Alvear Palace, flights and transfers. www.buenosaires.gov.ar for information on cultural events. www.todotango.com.ar for tango listings and music recommendations. www.bocajuniors.com.ar for ticket details and fixture lists for La Bombonera.

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