Buenos Aires, an energetic, fascinating and seductive port city, stretches south-to-north along the Rio de la Plata, and since its founding has served as the gateway to Argentina. Portenos, as the multinational people of Buenos Aires are known, possess a varied cultural identity. With Italian and German surnames outnumbering Spanish ones, Portenos value their European heritage highly, the lifestyle and architecture of Buenos Aires are markedly more European than in any other South American city.