Asuncion Audio Tours

Asuncion holds the title of Madre de Ciudades, the Mother of Cities, because it was from here that Spanish colonial expeditions departed to found over 60 other settlements, including Buenos Aires and Cordoba. The city was established on August 15, 1537 by Juan de Salazar de Espinosa on the banks of the Paraguay River, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in South America. The Casa de la Independencia on El Paraguayo Independiente street, where the 1811 independence conspiracy was plotted in the home of Juana Maria de Lara, still stands and is now a museum, as matter-of-fact about its historical significance as Asuncion is about most things.

The city sits on seven hills above the Paraguay River, with the Presidential Palace (Palacio de los Lopez, completed in 1892) and the National Pantheon of Heroes occupying the most prominent positions in the historic center.

The Panteon, modeled loosely on Les Invalides in Paris, holds the remains of national figures including Carlos Antonio Lopez and Francisco Solano Lopez, the father-and-son presidents whose decisions led Paraguay into the disastrous Paraguayan War of 1864-1870, which killed the majority of the male population and left the country transformed. Asuncion recovered slowly, absorbing waves of European and Ottoman immigrants in the late 19th century.