The Mother of Cities: the capital that founded the Río de la Plata

Look at the river. This is what Juan de Salazar y Espinosa saw on August 15, 1537. A 29-year-old Spanish captain, thousands of miles from home, searching for a missing explorer somewhere upriver. His mission: find Juan de Ayolas, who had gone north looking for the legendary Silver Mountain. Ayolas never turned up. What Salazar found instead was this bay — calm, sheltered by gentle hills, with fresh water and a Guaraní tribe called the carios. What happened next was almost an accident. The carios didn't attack. They offered food, alliance, women. They called this practice cuñadazgo: giving…

What you have in front of you was the political heart of Asunción for three hundred years. The current building was erected between 1846 and 1857. But the Cabildo — the institution — was born here on September 16, 1541. That day, Governor Domingo Martínez de Irala transformed Salazar's wooden fort into a formal city. Four years after the founding. An important distinction. The fort was military: it existed to survive. The city was something else: it had laws, authorities, recognized residents. Irala didn't just found the city; he transformed the relationship with the Guaraní into something …

In front of you stands the site of the oldest continuous ecclesiastical presence in South America. Not the current building, which was built and rebuilt several times. The institution itself. Since 1538 — one year after the fort's founding — there has been a priest here, an altar, a community that prayed. What changes Asunción in the 16th century is what the Jesuits do: instead of ignoring the Guaraní language, they learn it. They study it. They codify it. In 1603, the first Synod of Asunción decrees that evangelization must happen in Guaraní. That decision has consequences that last to thi…

In this house, on the night of May 14–15, 1811, Paraguay became independent. Without a single shot. At ten in the evening, Captain Pedro Juan Caballero rang the cathedral bells. That was the signal. The conspirators seized the barracks. The soldiers joined without resistance: they hadn't been paid in months and had no reason to defend the Spanish governor Velasco. By dawn on May 15, Velasco agreed to share power with two creole representatives. Forty-eight hours later, power was entirely in Paraguayan hands. Think about this: while Buenos Aires, Caracas, and Mexico achieved independence th…

This is probably the building with the strangest construction story in all of South America. President Francisco Solano López ordered it built in October 1863. Italian architect, neo-Renaissance style, inspired by the Panthéon in Paris. The idea was a chapel dedicated to the Virgin of the Assumption. Six months after the cornerstone was laid, the War of the Triple Alliance broke out. Paraguay went to war simultaneously against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. The building was left half-constructed. And there it stayed, with the scaffolding, for seventy-three years. It wasn't completed until…

These houses almost ceased to exist. In 1989, when the Stroessner dictatorship fell, the Asunción municipality had plans to demolish this entire block and build a modern building. Nine colonial and neoclassical houses built between 1750 and 1901, erased in one stroke. A group of architecture students launched the "Save the Block" campaign. They blocked the demolitions, pressured the newly installed government, and got the state to buy the land. The restoration took five years: 1991 to 1996. Today the Manzana de la Rivera is one of the most important cultural centers in Paraguay. Nine house…

The man who ordered this palace built never saw it finished. Francisco Solano López traveled through Europe between 1853 and 1854. He knew Paris. He saw the imperial architecture of Napoleon III. And he returned with two things: a French mistress named Elisa Lynch, and the plans for a palace. He commissioned construction in 1857 with an English architect and a Hungarian engineer. Inauguration: soon. In 1864 the war started. The palace was left unfinished. The allied forces bombarded it in 1869. They looted it. They took the ornaments, the furniture, everything to Brazil. Then they used it …

You're standing on one of Asunción's seven hills. The city was founded on this terrain: gentle hills sloping down to the Paraguay River. Before this church existed, before the city existed, this was Guaraní land. The parish of La Encarnación has a peculiar history: it moved five times before arriving here. The first location was in 1539, next to the bay. Then it kept moving uphill, as if searching for the city's highest point. It arrived at this final site in 1889. Architect Giovanni Colombo began construction in 1893. It was declared a National Historic Monument in 1992. This church is on…

I need you to stop for a second and calculate something. You're in a city founded in 1537. Current population: about 800,000. No metro, no skyscrapers. A relatively small capital on the banks of a river most of the world can't find on a map. Now think about the nickname: "mother of cities." It's not poetry. It's a verifiable fact. From Asunción departed the expeditions that founded Buenos Aires for the second time, in 1580. The first founding, in 1536, failed. The second, commanded by Juan de Garay, left from here. From Asunción also departed the expedition that founded Corrientes in 1588. …

We end where we almost began. In this square, or very close to here, Juan de Salazar planted his fort in 1537. Four and a half centuries of history unfolded within a few blocks of where you're standing: the founding, the formalization, the independence, the war that almost erased the country from the map, the dictatorship, the democracy. There's something I think is worth saying before we finish. Asunción is a city the world tends to ignore. It doesn't appear on travelers' itineraries in the region. It's not as photogenic as Buenos Aires, not as exotic as Cartagena, not as massive as São Pa…