Qualla: Luque

Luque: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BruDalessan, CC BY-SA 4.0. Walk past an open doorway in Luque and you might hear it before you see it: the bright cascade of a harp being tuned, or the soft tap of a chisel against rosewood. This is the workshop town of Paraguay, the place artisans call the cradle of the nation's lutería, the hand-built craft of stringed instruments. The Paraguayan harp, the diatonic instrument that carries the country's music, is born in family shops here, often passed down across generations. So are guitars, and so is something smaller and stranger: jewelry woven from threads of gold.

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Image: BruDalessan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Luque: Threads of Gold

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chipachyryry, CC0. The jewelers of Luque practice filigree, an exacting craft of twisting fine metal wire into lace. The work is called filigrana, and its most famous form is a ring of seven interwoven bands known as the Carretón de Siete Ramales. Picture seven thin hoops braided into one, so that ...

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Image: Chipachyryry | CC0

Luque: The Year the Capital Moved Here

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pepe Robles, Public domain. Luque's quiet streets once held the weight of a nation. During the War of the Triple Alliance, the catastrophic conflict that pitted Paraguay against Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay from 1864 to 1870, the war turned against President Francisco Solano López. After the fortress of H...

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Image: Pepe Robles | Public domain

Luque: The Name in the Salt Flats

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Juan Alberto Pérez, CC BY 2.0. Long before the harps and the war, there were the salt flats. The name Luque first appears in 1635, in an act of the Cabildo of Asunción, when the colonial governor granted two leagues of land near a place called las Salinas to a Spanish captain, Miguel Antón de Luque. He had bee...

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Image: Juan Alberto Pérez | CC BY 2.0

Luque: Football's Continental Capital

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thalmaniano, CC BY 3.0. Modern Luque carries a different kind of power. CONMEBOL, the body that governs South American football and stages the Copa Libertadores and Copa América, has its headquarters here, only a few minutes from the airport. Inside is the South American Football Museum, a shrine to a c...

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Image: Thalmaniano | CC BY 3.0