Cordoba Is A Joy To Visit

The second largest city in Argentina is every bit the joy and the must-visit as the country’s largest city.

Cordoba, 400 miles east of Buenos Aires – and just a 90-minute flight between the two on Aerolineas Argentinas – is heavily embedded with classic Spanish colonial architecture dating back centuries.

But while Cordoba might be the second-biggest city in the country, it is second to none from an education and cultural standpoint, its arts scene is vibrant, and its music still thumps with everything from modern-day electronic dance music to  cuarteto music, a four-piece band blend (violin, piano, accordion and bass) invented in the 1940s that is similar to merengue music.

The heart of Cordoba, like many South American and Spanish cities, is the Plaza San Martin. The city center is surrounded by the magnificent 17th- and 18th-century colonial-era structures, including the Cabildo, the former center for local government, and the Catedral, the oldest cathedral still standing in Argentina. (Interestingly, the Catedral was started in the late 1500s and took another 200 years to complete.)

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Keeping with the religious theme, another must-visit in Cordoba is La Manzana Jesuítica, or the Jesuit's Block. This is an entire campus given to the famed Society of Jesus, an all-male congregation affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

According to UNESCO, he Jesuit Block contains the core buildings of the Jesuit system: the university, the church and residence of the Society of Jesus, and the college. Along with the five estancias, or farming estates, they contain religious and secular buildings, which illustrate the unique religious, social, and economic experiment carried out in the world for a period of over 150 years in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Also to see in Cordoba is the Evita Fine Arts Museum, a mansion displaying provincial art from the region, and the Monasterio de Santa Teresa. Dating back to 1717, it was built by Juan de Tejeda, a great-nephew of Spain's St. Teresa of Avila, in honor of his daughter after she recovered from a near-fatal illness. To this day it is still a working Carmelite nunnery.