Mar del Plata audiotours

Patricio Peralta Ramos founded Mar del Plata on February 10, 1874, on Argentina's Atlantic coast about 400 kilometres south of Buenos Aires. When the railway arrived in 1886, the city's character was set: Buenos Aires families came here in summer and built chalets along the low cliffs above the beach. The architecture that emerged in the 1930s and 1940s became its own vernacular style, middle-class houses with stone facades, gable roofs, and Spanish and French tiles mixed together in ways that look deliberate and provincial at once. The architect Auro Tiribelli gave this style its clearest expression. Entire streets in the residential neighbourhoods still look exactly as they did in 1948.

In 1919, Mar del Plata became the first town in South America to elect a Socialist mayor.

It is Argentina's largest seaside resort, drawing more than eight million tourists in peak summer season while its year-round population sits around 700,000. The beach promenade, the rambla, runs past the lion sculptures and the clusters of yellow and orange beach umbrellas that have been photographed so often they have become the city's de facto symbol. The port, separated from the resort beaches, processes Argentina's largest fishing fleet.