It hardly has a century long history; La Plata was founded as the capital of the Province of Buenos Aires on November the 19th of 1882 in a place where there was no sign of a previous urban centre, just an estancia, a small port - Ensenada -, and its service hamlet.

Its creation took place in a moment of exceptional economic prosperity in Argentina. In 1881 Dardo Rocha, the founder, then Governor of Buenos Aires, entrusted its layout to the Department of Engineers, led by Pedro Benoit.

The original draft was a square, 5 km long on each side, bordered by wide park-drives. Currently, its interior, which has been overflowed due to urban growth, is a sort of super block divided in 36 blocks surrounded by wooded avenues.

There are important diagonal avenues superposed to this grid, which come from the vertices to converge on Plaza Moreno.

The green areas are one of the most important features of La Plata: it has 23 plazas, all built on the crossings of the avenues, and of these with the diagonals. The geometrical grid is broken at a short distance from the City of Buenos Aires to include Paseo del Bosque, a park which already existed in the estancia when the city was founded.

Due to this background, La Plata is a great example of a city rightly planned; it is located at a short distance from the City of Buenos Aires, to which it is linked through a highway and by the railway.

The city is mainly dedicated to the administration of the services provided by the state government. Its famous university attracts an important number of students from all over the country, while its splendid urban layout, its parks and museums, turn it into a city of great tourist and cultural worth.

In the same way this city was honoured at the International Fair of Paris with the Prize to Modernity, in the late XIX century. It has now been included amongst the applicants' list to be considered as Cultural Patrimony of Humanity by UNESCO. This distinction will allow it to get important investments and to become an international tourist reference spot that will be widely visited.

HOW TO GET THERE

By car
Along La Plata - Buenos Aires Highway, either through Centenario Road or General Belgrano Road, Federal Capital - La Plata: close to 55 km.

By train
From Constitution Plaza, it departs every 15 or 20 minutes (Mondays through Fridays), and every 30 minutes on Saturdays and Sundays.

La Plata Station, on 1st and 44th Avs
Telephone: (0221) 423-2575
Costumer service in the capital
Telephone (011) 1959-0800

By bus
Bus Terminal of Retiro
Telephone: (011) 4310-0700

Bus Terminal of La Plata, 4th and 42nd Streets
Telephone: (0221) 421-0992/2182
Trip time: 1 hour 10 minutes

PLACES OF INTEREST

Municipal Ecological Park
The Ecological Park opened its gates to the public on November of 1998, after an extreme phase of conversion and salvage of the estate and its installations. It was born from an initiative of the local municipality in 1992, which acquired the 200 has of the property in order to make it part of the natural and cultural patrimony of the city. It currently plays an important role on ecological instruction.

Pereyra Iraola Park
It has a recreational area suitable to the reception of an important number of visitors; it occupies 600 has around the main house of the Estancia Santa Rosa, which was the property of the Iraola family, and now operates as the park's administration offices. In order to tour the place you can rent horses, mountain bikes, boats or kayaks at the lakes. The Chapel of Santa Elena, which is next to the main building, can also be visited. It is located at 25 km distance from La Plata.

Paseo del Bosque
It is laid over the base of the former Pereyra Iraola Estancia, and it is the largest public green space of the City of La Plata. It houses important public buildings such as the Museum of Natural Sciences and the Astronomic Observatory.

Wild Animals' Breeding Station (ECAS)
Placed in Villa Elisa, this station is in charge of preserving menaced species; it has a watching area that can be toured on a vehicle, a huge pond, a sector with caged animals and a picnic area. Animals can be appreciated roaming freely in a clone of their natural habitats.

Republic of the Children
It is located on General Belgrano Road and 501st St; it embraces a 52-has estate and has been designed as to reproduce at sacale several geographic features and natural landscapes.

This place was planned to serve a double purpose: on the one hand, to provide children with creative recreation in a world of dreams and stories and, on the other, to make learn about and exercise the rights and duties that citizens have in every democratic country.

The settings of this monumental work, built at a child scale, have been inspired on Andersen's and the Grimm Brothers' tales, as well as on legend's descriptions. When Walt Disney visited the place in 1953, he got inspiration on it for the construction of Disneyland, in California, seven years later.

A miniature train runs across the entire estate, and a steamboat, replica of those riding the Mississippi, allows for tours through the lake. Architectonically speaking, the buildings are replicas of the Palace of the Signoria, in Florence, and the Palace of the Dux in Venice; the Giralda Tower, in Seville, the Patio of the Lions of The Alhambra; and domes identical to that of the Taj Mahal, in India, amongst others. It is one of the most outstanding places in La Plata.

The Cathedral
With pink masonry and a height that makes it visible long before arriving to the city, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception is the largest neo-gothic temple in all South America. Its designer, Pedro Benoit, was inspired on the cathedrals of Cologne, in Germany, and Amiens, in France, and started its building in the year 1885 on a surface of seven thousand m2.

In the interior, the beauty of its floor stands out, made of granite stone and polished like a mirror. It has 89 large windows, of which 37 have stained glass of French and German origins representing scenes from the Old and New Testaments.

Its church towers, rising at 112 m, reach the highest altitude in the city.