Three days in Cordoba: the Jesuits built it, the students took it over

Two nights in Argentina's second city, walked as the colonial square, the UNESCO-listed Jesuit block and the student quarter, with the Sierras an hour to the west.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Córdoba (city, Argentina)
Places
8 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Cordoba was founded in 1573 and the Jesuits arrived a few decades later with a plan that has outlasted everything else about the place. They built a church, a college, a university and the country estates to pay for all three, and four hundred years later the university is still the reason the city looks and sounds the way it does.

Around two hundred thousand people study here. That single fact explains the cheap food, the volume after midnight, the number of bookshops, and why a city best known abroad for conference centres is one of the least stuffy places in Argentina.

Two nights is right. The colonial core is about six blocks square and can be walked in an afternoon, the museums fill a day, and anything more is a reason to go up into the Sierras rather than to stay in the city.

Highlights

  • The Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus, whose roof was built like an upturned ship's hull because the man who built it built boats
  • The Jesuit block, a university, a church and a school on one city block, all UNESCO listed
  • Museo Caraffa, a serious contemporary collection in a city nobody visits for art
  • The Guemes craft market at the weekend, which is where the city actually goes
  • Fernet and cola, drunk here in quantities that embarrass the rest of the country

Where to stay

Cordoba

Argentina's second city has about a million and a half people and almost no international profile, which works in its favour. Nobody comes here on a list, so the Jesuit block is quiet on a weekday morning and the museums are close to empty.

The shape is simple. A colonial square at the centre, the Jesuit block two streets southwest of it, the university quarter and the museums running south from there, and Barrio Guemes with the market and the bars beyond that. The Sierras start about half an hour west and are where the city goes at the weekend.

Day by day

Day 1 in Córdoba (city, Argentina)

Plaza San Martin, the cathedral and the Cabildo

The main square has been the middle of Cordoba since 1573 and the two buildings on its western side have been arguing with each other for most of that time. The cathedral took two centuries to finish and changed architect and style several times on the way, which is why it looks like three churches wearing one facade. Next to it, the low white Cabildo was the colonial town hall and later the police headquarters, including during the dictatorship, and it now holds exhibitions and the tourist office.

Everything here is within a hundred metres of everything else, which is what you want after a flight. Get your bearings now and the Jesuit block tomorrow will make sense.

Eat late. The centre empties after office hours, so walk the ten minutes down to Nueva Cordoba or Guemes for dinner.

  1. 15:00

    Plaza San Martín

    Historic

    The heart of the city and the origin of its street numbering, with San Martin on horseback in the middle and colonial arcades along one side. Sit on a bench, watch the students cut through, and note which way the streets change their names.

  2. 15:45

    Córdoba Cathedral

    Religious

    Begun in the sixteenth century and not finished until the eighteenth, with a heavy baroque dome that had to be redesigned when the first one failed. The interior is darker and more ornate than the plain exterior suggests, and the ceiling frescoes are twentieth century work by a Cordoban painter.

  3. 16:45

    Cabildo

    Visit

    The colonial council house, arcaded and whitewashed, now an exhibition space with the tourist office inside. The cells underneath were used by the last military government, and the building does not hide it.

  4. 21:30

    Dinner in Guemes

    Eat

    The old quarter southwest of the centre, low buildings and antique shops by day and the best restaurants in the city by night. Fernet with cola while you wait, and no kitchen opens before nine.

With more time: The Museo Historico Marques de Sobremonte, a block east, is one of the very few colonial family houses left in the city and is worth the half hour for the building alone. Iglesia de Santa Catalina de Siena and the pink baroque Monasterio de Santa Teresa are both on the same few streets, and the latter has the religious art museum in it.

Day 2 in Córdoba (city, Argentina)

The Jesuit block, then the museums of Nueva Cordoba

One city block southwest of the square holds a church, a private chapel, a school, a university and the residence that ran them, all built between roughly 1610 and 1780 and all still doing more or less their original jobs. UNESCO listed the lot in 2000, along with the estancias out in the countryside that funded it.

The church is the thing. The Jesuits could not find anyone in the province who could vault a roof in stone, so the job went to a Flemish shipwright, who did it in cedar the only way he knew: as an upturned hull. Look up.

The university next door was founded in 1613 and is one of the oldest in the Americas. Its old cloister and library are open as a museum, and the Colegio de Montserrat, the Jesuit school that fed it, is across the street and still teaching.

Afternoon is for the other Cordoba, ten minutes south. Nueva Cordoba is towers and students, and it has the best art museum in central Argentina sitting on a roundabout.

  1. 09:30

    Iglesia Compañía de Jesús

    Visit

    The oldest church still standing in Argentina, finished in the early seventeenth century, with a cedar ceiling built as an inverted ship's hull by a shipwright who had never built a roof. Plain outside, extraordinary above your head.

  2. 10:45

    Ex Rectorado de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

    Visit

    The original university building, baroque, with a stone cloister and a museum tracing four centuries of teaching. The old library holds books the Jesuits brought and the ones the crown left behind when it expelled them in 1767.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch on the way south

    Eat

    The streets between the Jesuit block and Nueva Cordoba are full of student places doing a two-course menu for very little. The local empanada is the baked, faintly sweet kind, which divides the country.

  4. 15:00

    Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Emilio E. Caraffa

    Visit

    Argentine and Latin American contemporary art in a grand old pavilion on Plaza Espana, with changing shows that are consistently better than a provincial museum has any right to be. Big, bright rooms and almost nobody in them.

With more time: The Capilla domestica, the Jesuits' own private chapel on the same block, is only opened on request and is the most beautiful room in the city when it is. Out on Plaza Espana, the Faro del Bicentenario is a lighthouse standing a thousand kilometres from the nearest sea, which tells you something about how Argentina builds monuments. Parque Sarmiento starts behind it if you want an hour of trees.

Day 3 in Córdoba (city, Argentina)

Guemes, the craft market and the old prison

Barrio Guemes is the oldest working-class quarter in Cordoba and the one that has aged best: single-storey houses, ironwork, antique dealers, and a craft market that takes over several streets on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. On a weekday it is quieter and the shops are still open.

Five minutes east, the Paseo del Buen Pastor was a women's prison attached to a church until the city gutted it and turned the yards into a public square with galleries and fountains. It is a strange, successful piece of reuse and it is where Nueva Cordoba meets for coffee.

Flights to Buenos Aires leave through the day and the airport bus takes about forty minutes from the centre, so a morning here is realistic before an afternoon departure.

  1. 10:00

    Paseo de las Artes

    Visit

    The craft and art market of Barrio Guemes, spread along old low buildings and busiest on weekend afternoons. Leather, silver, mate gourds and a lot of things you do not need, plus the best street food in the city.

  2. 12:00

    Paseo del Buen Pastor

    Visit

    A nineteenth century women's prison built against a church, now opened out into a plaza of galleries, bars and dancing fountains. Go for the transformation rather than the shops.

  3. 13:15

    Last lunch before the airport

    Eat

    Anywhere on Belgrano or Achaval Rodriguez in Guemes. Order a lomito, the Cordoban steak sandwich, which arrives with an egg and most of a salad inside it and is not a small thing.

With more time: With a late flight, La Perla is a memorial on the western edge of the city in a former secret detention centre used between 1976 and 1983. It is not a comfortable hour and it is the most important thing in Cordoba after the Jesuit block. The Museo de la Industria, closer in, is the light alternative: Argentine cars, motorbikes and a house that rotates.

Before you go

Getting in and getting around

Ingeniero Taravella airport is 12 km north of the centre with a regular bus into town, and it takes flights from most Argentine and several South American cities. Coming from Buenos Aires the flight is an hour and the bus is around ten, but the overnight coaches are genuinely comfortable, with seats that lie flat, and they save a night's accommodation. If you connect through Buenos Aires by air, note that international arrivals land at Ezeiza and domestic flights leave from Aeroparque, and getting between them is on you.

The centre is walked. Public transport is buses only, the tram having gone in the 1960s, and the routes are hard to work out even with an app. Taxis and ride-hailing are cheap.

One local quirk worth knowing: street numbering starts from the northwest corner of Plaza San Martin, and several streets change name as they cross that point. San Martin becomes Independencia, Dean Funes becomes Rosario de Santa Fe. It sounds worse than it is, and after a day it is the fastest way to know which side of the centre you are on.

Eating and drinking

Cordoba drinks fernet with cola, in a tall glass with a lot of ice, and drinks more of it per head than anywhere else in the world. It is bitter, medicinal and takes about three attempts to enjoy. Ordering one is the fastest way to be treated as something other than a tourist.

The food is Argentine standard, which is to say beef, pizza and empanadas, though the Cordoban empanada goes in the oven rather than the fryer and carries a little sugar. Barrio Guemes, southwest of the centre, has the interesting restaurants and the bars; the streets around the university have the cheap ones. Almost nothing serves dinner before nine.

Cuarteto, a fast accordion-driven dance music, was invented in this city in the 1940s and remains stubbornly regional. The dances are enormous, cheap and not aimed at visitors, which is exactly why they are worth an evening.

Where to stay

Nueva Cordoba is the obvious choice: a grid of tall student buildings and cafes south of the centre, within ten minutes' walk of both the Jesuit block and the museums, and busy at every hour. Barrio Guemes next door is lower, older and prettier, with the antique shops and the weekend market.

The centre itself is convenient and dull after dark, when the offices empty. Wherever you land, the whole visitable city fits inside a rectangle about two kilometres long, so the choice matters less here than in most places.

Staying safe

Cordoba is calmer than Buenos Aires and the ordinary rules apply: watch your pockets on crowded buses, keep your phone away from the table edge. The main avenues of the centre and Nueva Cordoba are fine at any hour, with the stretch along the Rio Suquia the exception on quiet weeknights.

There is a dedicated tourist police detachment covering the strip between Plaza San Martin and Plaza Espana, which is where you will spend most of your time anyway, and they speak English and Portuguese.

When to come

The city sits between the flat pampas and the Sierras, and the climate is warmer and drier than the coast. October to December and March to May are the comfortable months. January and February are hot and the students are gone, which takes the character out of the place; July is cold at night and bright in the day.

Cordoba is a city that was built for one purpose in 1613 and has never really stopped serving it. What makes it a good three days is the collision: four hundred year old cloisters on one block and, on the next, twenty thousand people who will be up until five.

From here it is a short flight to Salta and the northwest, or a long comfortable overnight coach to Mendoza and the wine country.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Cordoba worth a stop, or should I go straight to Salta or Mendoza?
Worth a stop if you like cities. The Jesuit block is the best colonial architecture in Argentina outside the missions, and two nights costs you very little on a long trip. If your interest is landscape rather than buildings, the answer is genuinely no, and the flight or the coach onward is the better use of the days.
What about the Sierras?
They start half an hour west and are where Cordobans spend every weekend: river swimming holes, small hill towns, and Alta Gracia with its Jesuit estancia and the house where Che Guevara grew up. Buses go from the main terminal all day. Add a night if you want any of it, because it does not fit around a three day city stay.
Is the Spanish really that different?
The Cordoban accent is the most recognisable in Argentina, with a rising drag in the middle of words that people from Buenos Aires cheerfully imitate. It is also the accent of most Argentine comedians. You will not miss anything, but you will notice.
Can I change this plan?
Yes. Copy it, move the museums around, drop the market if you are not here at the weekend, add a night for the Sierras.