People walking past a metal stand displaying picture frames of buildings, tango dancers, songs, Caminito, La Boca, Buenos Aires
El Caminito ('Little Street'), less than 100m long, is named after a Tango song dating to 1926. Between 1880 and 1930 over 6 million immigrants arrived in Buenos Aires. 50% were Italians from the port of Genoa. Many stayed in La Boca, working in the shipyards of the area. They brought an old tradition: to build their houses from left over materials such as scrap corrugated iron and wood from old ships, then brighten them up with left over paint from the shipyards. In the late 1950s much of the old housing in La Boca was pulled down and replaced with blocks of flats. In 1959 the painter Benito Quinquela Martin, who had been adopted by a Genoese immigrant couple in La Boca, decided, with artist friends, to create the street of El Caminito, as an art-work representation of what La Boca used to look like. Some materials were rescued from the original immigrant housing. Nobody, today, lives in the brightly coloured tenement blocks or 'conventillos'. The street today is lined with market stalls selling tourist souvenirs and paintings, as seen here.
Size: 5008px × 3370px
Location: Caminito, La Boca, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Photo credit: © robert harrison / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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