Memories and hints of a travelling IT professional.
Eva María Duarte was born in 1919 in the small town of Los Toldos and grew up in modest circumstances. As a teenager, she moved to Buenos Aires to pursue a career as an actress, gradually becoming well known on the radio and stage. Her life changed when she met Colonel Juan Domingo Perón; they married in 1945, and when he became president in 1946, she emerged as one of Argentina’s most influential public figures.
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The Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, generally known as MALBA, is one of the city’s leading cultural institutions. Located on Avenida Figueroa Alcorta in the city quarter Palermo of Buenos Aires, it is a private, non-profit museum devoted to collecting, preserving, researching and presenting Latin American art from the early twentieth century to the present. Its modern building, with pale stone, glass and angular forms, is almost as distinctive as the collection inside.
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The Teatro Colón is Buenos Aires’ grand opera house, situated on Avenida Cerrito in the city centre. It presents opera, ballet, symphonic concerts and other classical performances, and is admired for both its richly decorated architecture and exceptionally clear acoustics. Its stage has welcomed many internationally renowned artists, making it one of the most distinguished performing-arts venues in the Americas.
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Buenos Aires’ oldest public square and Argentina’s most important civic and political meeting place. Its name commemorates the May revolution of 1810, which began the process leading to independence from Spanish rule. Since then, the square has witnessed celebrations, demonstrations, political speeches and moments of national crisis, making it a place where Argentina’s history remains unusually visible in everyday city life.
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Combining a visit to Montevideo and Buenos Aires is easy, as you can cross the Río de la Plata via ferry boat. There are multiple options; I opted in for the Buquebus crossing which begins at the company’s terminal in Colonia del Sacramento. To get there, you need to take a bus from the Tres Cruces bus terminal at Montevideo where you can also check in your luggage.
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Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital and principal port, grew from a Spanish military settlement founded between 1724 and 1730 to control the strategically important Río de la Plata and resist Portuguese expansion from Brazil. Its original name was San Felipe y Santiago de Montevideo, while the settlement gradually developed around the bay and its fortified old town. The city’s walls were built in the eighteenth century but demolished in the nineteenth, leaving the Ciudad Vieja and the surviving gateway as reminders of its colonial beginnings.
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One of the most elegant survivals of Montevideo’s early-20th-century confidence and prosperity. Palacio Taranco stands beside Plaza Zabala in Ciudad Vieja, on the site once occupied by the colonial-era Casa de Comedias, regarded as the city’s first theatre. Commissioned by the Ortiz de Taranco family in 1908, the residence was designed by the French architects Charles-Louis Girault and Jules-Léon Chifflot, whose work gave the house a distinctly French, aristocratic character.
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The peso uruguayo (UYU), usually written as $ or $U , is Uruguay’s official currency. The present peso was introduced on March 1st, 1993, replacing the nuevo peso at a rate of 1 peso uruguayo for 1,000 nuevos pesos. It is divided into 100 centésimos, although centésimo coins are no longer commonly used.
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The Museo de Arte Precolombino e Indígena, generally known as MAPI, is Montevideo’s museum devoted to the archaeology, art and living cultural traditions of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. It stands in Ciudad Vieja, the historic quarter of the city, and provides a valuable counterpoint to the colonial architecture and European-influenced history that dominate much of central Montevideo. Rather than presenting indigenous cultures as a distant prelude to national history, the museum places them at the centre of a broader American story, extending from Uruguay to the rest of Latin America and beyond.
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Montevideo’s Palacio Legislativo is Uruguay’s parliamentary seat: the building in which the General Assembly meets, comprising the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate. Standing prominently in the Aguada district on Avenida de las Leyes, it is far more than an administrative building; it is a national monument and one of the city’s clearest expressions of civic confidence and republican identity.
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