Qualla: Paraná, Entre Ríos

Paraná, Entre Ríos: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AnitaAD, CC BY-SA 4.0. The city did not begin with a grand founding. Sometime around 1730, people from Santa Fe drifted across the wide Paraná River and settled on the higher eastern bank, calling their new home the Bajada del Paraná, the descent to the Paraná. For more than a century it was a modest river town overshadowed by its older neighbor across the water. Then, in the 1850s, history reached down and lifted it: with Buenos Aires in open secession, the provinces chose this bluff-top town as the capital of the Argentine Confederation. For eight extraordinary years, Paraná was the seat of a nation, and the boost it received then still shows in the city it became.

Read more: Paraná, Entre Ríos on Qualla

Image: AnitaAD | CC BY-SA 4.0

Paraná, Entre Ríos: The City That Climbed

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Valenroselli, CC BY-SA 3.0. 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 pare...

Read more: Paraná, Entre Ríos on Qualla

Image: Valenroselli | CC BY-SA 3.0

Paraná, Entre Ríos: Eight Years as a National Capital

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marcos Combet, CC BY-SA 4.0. 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 pres...

Read more: Paraná, Entre Ríos on Qualla

Image: Marcos Combet | CC BY-SA 4.0

Paraná, Entre Ríos: A City of Players and Poets

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. 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 be...

Read more: Paraná, Entre Ríos on Qualla

Image: Public domain

Paraná, Entre Ríos: Looking Out Over the River

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mariana melhem, CC BY-SA 3.0. 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 harb...

Read more: Paraná, Entre Ríos on Qualla

Image: Mariana melhem | CC BY-SA 3.0