Paraná's geography is its defining feature. Unlike the flat river towns nearby, it rises on bluffs above the Paraná, giving it heights, viewpoints, and a relationship with the water that is more balcony than waterfront. Across the river sits Santa Fe, its sister city and old parent, and the two are now joined by an engineering marvel: the Hernandarias Subfluvial Tunnel, which runs beneath the riverbed rather than over it, one of the earliest immersed-tube road tunnels in South America. To stand on Paraná's heights and look west is to see the great river spread into islands, with Santa Fe shimmering on the far bank, the two cities forever facing each other across the water that both connects and divides them.

In 1853 the provinces of the Argentine Confederation, having broken with a seceded Buenos Aires, named Paraná their capital, with the Entre Ríos caudillo Justo José de Urquiza as the Confederation's first president. From 1854 to 1861 the federal authorities resided here: the president, the congress, the machinery of a country determined to function without its largest city. Those years transformed Paraná, accelerating its economic, cultural, and population growth far beyond what a provincial town might have expected. When Buenos Aires rejoined the reunified republic in 1861, Paraná lost the national seat, but it kept the institutions, the buildings, and the civic confidence the capital years had given it, and it remains the capital of Entre Ríos Province to this day.

For a city of its size, Paraná has sent a striking number of people into Argentina's sporting and cultural life. It produced Roberto Ayala, one of the most-capped defenders in the history of the national football team, and the rugby star Martín Castrogiovanni, born here before becoming an Italy international and a household name. The writer Manuel Gálvez and the poets Evaristo Carriego and Andrés Chabrillón all have roots in the city. Paraná lives its sport loudly: the basketball club Atlético Echagüe competes in Argentina's top professional division, the footballers of Patronato and Club Atlético Paraná draw passionate local crowds, and in 2023 the city hosted the inaugural U-23 Men's Softball World Cup.

Modern Paraná is a green provincial capital of over a quarter-million people, defined still by the river it climbs above. Its parks line the bluffs; its avenues funnel toward viewpoints over the water; its identity is bound to the Paraná the way a port city's is bound to its harbor, except that here the relationship is one of elevation and outlook rather than docks. The city keeps ties around the world through sister cities from Quebec to Salto to Muscatine, Iowa, but its truest companion remains the one directly across the channel. Paraná and Santa Fe have spent three centuries in conversation across the water, two cities that began as one and never quite stopped looking at each other.