Carlos Thays Botanical Garden Tour: Walking With Carlos Thays

A slow walk through shade, sculptures, and the stories that shaped Buenos Aires

The iron-and-glass greenhouse is the Botánico’s quiet showpiece. It catches the sun like a jewel and anchors the garden with a bit of Paris tucked into Buenos Aires. Thays lived just steps from here, and you can feel his hand in every curve of the metalwork.

Step through the gate of the Carlos Thays Botanical Garden and Buenos Aires immediately changes temperature. The noise from Avenida Santa Fe fades, the tree canopy lowers the heat a few degrees, and the gravel under your shoes sets a slower rhythm. People come here to sit in the shade and drink mate, drift into their thoughts, and let the day ease up a bit.

A quiet bench in the Botánico is never just a bench. This spot catches the softest light in the garden, the kind that slips through the trees and cools the air by a few degrees. It is one of my favorite places to sit with guests, talk about Thays, and let the city fall away for a moment.

Most visitors see a beautiful park. What they miss is the story hiding underneath it. This garden is shaped by bold ideas, scientific experiments, surprising mistakes, and sculptures that tell far darker tales than the peaceful walk would suggest.

The garden as an outdoor museum

Every few meters, you turn a corner and meet something unexpected. A bronze boy lifting a jug to the sky. The she-wolf nursing Rome’s founders. A fountain that glows in the morning light as water lilies spread across the pond. And the Sagunto sculpture: a mother holding a dagger to her chest after killing her son during Hannibal’s siege of the Roman city. It is carved from marble but somehow feels lighter in the afternoon sunlight, suspended between grief and defiance.

“Primavera” stands in one of the sunniest clearings of the Botánico. The figure rises from a curling shell, all light and movement, while the smaller form at her feet sinks toward the earth. It is a strange, beautiful piece, and it always catches people by surprise when they come around the bend.

Then there are the mistakes that became part of the garden’s charm. When Thays ordered an Italian philosopher for the Roman section, he received a Greek statesman instead. Esquines arrived on the ship, and Thays decided to keep him. Even Buenos Aires in the 1890s understood the value of rolling with a shipping error.

The man behind the garden

Carlos Thays arrived from France in 1889 with a six-month contract and every expectation of heading home. Buenos Aires had other ideas. He was already in his forties when he met the young woman who would become his wife at sixteen. The age gap is uncomfortable today, unless you are Megyn Kelly, but it is part of the city’s history. And in Thays’ case it is the reason he stayed, raised a family here, and spent the rest of his life turning Buenos Aires into one enormous open-air garden.

What I appreciate about his work is how he embraced the city instead of trying to overwrite it. While the local elites were still busy importing Europe one garden at a time, Thays experimented with native species, grafted subtropical trees, and even planted the city’s first mate grove to prove the crop could thrive. That small patch of soil nudged mate from regional tradition to national ritual.

The sculpture of Sagunto is one of the most arresting pieces in the Botánico. A mother raises a dagger to her breast after killing her son, an echo of the city’s suicide pact during Hannibal’s siege of the Roman city of Sagunto. In the afternoon light, the marble looks almost weightless, caught between sorrow and defiance.

The mansion at the center of the garden was his home. He woke up every day surrounded by seedlings, experiments, and new ideas. If you pause in front of the house early in the morning, you can almost imagine him inside, studying plants before the rest of the city opened its eyes.

If you have taken my Palermo Food and Neighborhood Tour, parts of this may feel familiar. I walk guests through the shorter version of this story all the time. The VoiceMap tour is the extended cut. It circles through corners of the park I do not always reach during my in-person walks. It gives you time to settle into the space, linger with the sculptures, and see how the city’s history sits quietly inside the trees.

A different vision for Buenos Aires

At the time, Buenos Aires elites wanted European gardens. They wanted Parisian promenades and carefully imported species. Thays had a different thought. He looked inward, at Argentine flora, and saw beauty that had never been celebrated.

He experimented with native species, grafted cuttings he found along the roadside, and planted the city’s first mate grove to help demonstrate the crop’s potential. That tiny grove played a small role in pushing yerba mate toward becoming one of Argentina’s national symbols.

The butterfly garden feels like a secret tucked inside the Botánico. The path bends, the greenery closes in, and suddenly the air changes. This is where the garden shows its softer side, all filtered light and quiet corners.

The Austro-Hungarian Gift to the Garden

Near the center of the garden stands a stone weather station, a gift from the Austro-Hungarian community to Buenos Aires. In spring, the pink blossoms gather around it and soften its lines. Most visitors walk past without realizing that this monument was once a working scientific instrument.

When it was installed, the base of the station held several pieces of weather-measuring equipment. Over the years the city removed those devices and filled the openings and etched the names of the original instruments and the scientists who created them. If you look closely, one of those names might surprise you. Seinfeld fans will immediately recognize a particular surname that became a running joke in the series. It is a small, unexpected bit of humor carved into a quiet corner of the Botánico.

The weather station was a gift from the Austro-Hungarian community to Buenos Aires, and it still stands at the center of the Botánico like a small monument to science and seasons. Each spring the pink blossoms gather around it, softening the stone, and visitors pause here without always knowing its story.

Why this is one of the most photogenic places in the city

If you walk in with a phone or a camera, you walk out with far more photos than you planned. The greenhouse glows like an old Parisian jewel. The canopy filters sunlight into ribbons. Shaded benches look like invitations. Every sculpture has its own personality. This is one of the easiest places in Buenos Aires to lose track of time.

The fountain by the lily pond always feels like the garden’s quiet heartbeat. Light catches the bronze figures in the late morning, and the water plants gather around them like an audience. It is one of the easiest places to forget you are in the middle of Buenos Aires.

What You’ll See on the Carlos Thays Botanical Garden Tour

A short while ago, I created a self-guided VoiceMap tour of the garden. I recorded it while walking through every path, placing the stories exactly where they happened. It is the way I guide friends and guests when we stroll through the Botánico, only now it is available for anyone who wants to experience it on their own.

VoiceMap uses GPS, so the audio plays automatically as you move. No need to hold a map or rush to keep up with a group. It feels like walking with a friend who knows the twists, the sculptures, and the history tucked into the corners of the park.

You can do it alone, or you can share earbuds with someone and walk together. Couples tend to pause at the pond, linger at the greenhouse, or talk quietly in the butterfly garden before continuing the route.

Every path in the Botánico leads somewhere a little unexpected. One turn opens into bright yellow blossoms, another toward the old greenhouses. It is a garden made for wandering, and people naturally fall into its slower rhythm.

If you would like to explore the garden the way I explore it, story by story and sculpture by sculpture, the VoiceMap tour is the easiest way to come along.

Here is the link to the tour: English Version: voicemap.me/carlosthays  Spanish Version