La Plata


La Plata is the capital city of Buenos Aires province, Argentina. According to the 2022 census, the Partido has a population of 772,618 and its metropolitan area, the Greater La Plata, has 938,287 inhabitants. It is located 9 kilometers inland from the southern shore of the Río de la Plata estuary.
La Plata was planned and developed to serve as the provincial capital after the city of Buenos Aires was federalized in 1880. It was officially founded by Governor Dardo Rocha on 19 November 1882. Its construction is fully documented in photographs by Tomás Bradley Sutton. La Plata was briefly known as Ciudad Eva Perón between 1952 and 1955.

History and description

After La Plata was designated the provincial capital, Rocha was placed in charge of creating the city. He hired urban planner Pedro Benoit, who designed a city layout based on a rationalist conception of urban centers. The city has the shape of a square with a central park and two main diagonal avenues, north to south and east to west. In addition, there are numerous other shorter diagonal streets. This design is copied in a self-similar manner in small blocks of six by six blocks in length. For every six blocks, there is a small park or square. Other than the diagonal streets, all streets are on a rectangular grid and are numbered consecutively. Thus, La Plata is nicknamed "la ciudad de las diagonales". It is also called "la ciudad de los tilos", because of the large number of linden trees lining the many streets and squares. The linden tree is one of a number of deciduous Northern Hemisphere tree species which dominate La Plata's parks and streets; ash, horsechestnut, plane, sweetgum and tulip tree are among the other examples. Palms and subtropical broadleaf evergreen trees thrive but are comparatively infrequent.
The city design and its buildings are noted to possess strong Freemason symbolism as a consequence of both Rocha and Benoit being Freemasons.
The designs for the government buildings were chosen in an international architectural competition. Thus, the Governor Palace was designed by Italians, the City Hall by Germans, etc. Electric street lighting was installed in 1884 and was the first of its kind in Latin America.

Important landmarks

The neo-Gothic cathedral of La Plata is the largest church in Argentina. It is located on the central park, Plaza Moreno, and is the 58th tallest church in the world.
The Teatro Argentino de La Plata is one of the most important opera houses in Argentina, second to the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. The construction was funded by the first inhabitants of La Plata, but as maintenance was very expensive it was later donated to the Province of Buenos Aires. On 18 October 1977, the building was almost completely destroyed by a fire. This has been noted as one of the largest losses to La Plata's historical heritage. It was later replaced by a new building, which houses the theatre's orchestra, choir and ballet, boasting several halls.
The Curutchet House is one of the two buildings by Le Corbusier built in the Americas.
The University of La Plata was founded in 1897 and nationalized in 1905. It is well known for its observatory and natural history museum. Ernesto Sabato graduated in Physics at this university; he went on to teach at the Sorbonne and the MIT before becoming a famed novelist. Doctor René Favaloro was another famous alumnus. During its early years, the university attracted a number of intellectuals from the Spanish-speaking world, such as Dominican Pedro Henríquez Ureña.
is on the corner of 48th and 5th Streets. It was the first chapel in La Plata and Pedro Benoit himself drew up the plans for the church. It was inaugurated on 19 November 1883, the first anniversary of the foundation of the city. Its neo-Gothic style has been well kept, and the inner paintings are now being restored. Then-governor Rocha was the one to name it "San Ponciano". This was both in memory of his son Ponciano and in honor of Pope Pontian. Inside the church is the "Virgen de Luján" niche, which was moved here in 1904.

La Plata in the 20th century

Under Alvear's administration, Enrique Mosconi, the president of the state oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, created the La Plata distillery, at the time the tenth largest in the world.
On 10 December 1945, in the Parish church of St. Francis of Assisi in this city, Juan Domingo Perón and Eva Duarte were married.
In 1952, the city was renamed Ciudad Eva Perón; its original name was restored in 1955.
In March 1976, the Argentine military seized power following a coup d'état, which involved the disappearance of a number of students from La Plata. The military junta had implemented what was called the National Reorganization Process which was a set of policies used by the regime to destroy left-wing guerrilla forces and oppress resistance to its rule. The process included kidnappings, torture and murder. Meanwhile, the Montoneros, a leftist guerilla group, responded violently to the junta and its actions as they enlisted other Argentines to join their campaign against the regime. Those enlisted included young, left-wing, politically active students from the organization named the Unión de Estudiantes Secundarios of La Plata. The UES was committed to achieving school reforms and other political reforms through demonstrations and protests that irked the ruling regime. Many of these students were kidnapped and killed as part of the state's terrorism during the dictatorship.
In October 1998, UNESCO approved the city's bid to gain recognition as a World Heritage site. The approval is still pending due to various objections to the criterion of maintaining architectural and landscape features during recent decades, which in the opinion of other specialists, has caused severe damage to the original design and contextual aesthetics.

Sports and stadiums

The city is home to two important first division football teams: Estudiantes de La Plata and Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata.
Estudiantes de La Plata is the most successful club in the city, having won seven national tournaments, four Copa Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup against the Manchester United in 1968. It is the origin of several symbols of Argentine football such as Osvaldo Zubeldía, Carlos Bilardo, Alejandro Sabella, Juan Ramón and Juan Sebastián Verón. Estudiantes has had a great influence on the Argentine National Team, mainly through Bilardo in the 1986 World Cup. Its successes and its style of play, normally called bilardismo, have placed it in the position of exponent of a football style deeply rooted in the country.
For its part, Gimnasia de La Plata, founded in 1887, has not obtained titles in the professional era, but it is a traditional First Division club.
The Estadio Ciudad de La Plata, also known as the "Estadio Único", opened on 7 June 2003, as one of the most modern football stadiums in Latin America. Various other construction and renovation projects have continued, including the addition of a roof structure. Estudiantes played in the new stadium from 2006 to 2019 while their own stadium was being modernized; Estudiantes returned to its traditional home ground of Jorge Luis Hirschi Stadium in 2019. Gimnasia La Plata has only played occasional home games in the Estadio Único. In 2011, the Estadio Ciudad de La Plata was one of the host sites for the 2011 Copa America including an opening-round match between Argentina and Bolivia, a semi-final game, and the third-place final. Now, the stadium is additionally used for concerts and Puma matches.
Jorge Luis Hirschi Stadium, the home ground of Estudiantes, is located on 1st Avenue in La Plata. Estadio Juan Carmelo Zerillo, the home ground of Gimnasia La Plata, is located in a park known as El Bosque.
During 2009, following a series of agreements between the city municipality, the governor of the province and the nation's presidency, progress was made in the final transfer of the land of the Paseo del Bosque to Estudiantes and Gimnasia La Plata clubs. On 24 June 2009, the Deliberative Council adopted the convention and the ordinance for which Gimnasia and Estudiantes clubs received "grants" for the lands on which their home grounds are currently located within El Bosque.

Elections and civic advances

On 28 October 2007, Pablo Bruera was elected mayor with 26% of the votes, replacing Julio Alak, who had been mayor since 1991.
On 25 February 2009, La Plata debuted a parking system that uses text messaging, thus becoming the first city in Argentina to control parking using technology applications.
The Pasaje Rodrigo, a traditional "galería", reopened its doors in April 2009 as Pasaje Rodrigo shopping mall, after having been closed to the public for 10 years. It had originally been opened in 1929 by Spanish immigrant Basilio Rodrigo.
On 25 October 2015, Julio Garro was elected mayor with 41.35% of the votes, replacing Pablo Bruera, who had been mayor since 2007. Garro was reelected for a second term in 2019. In the 2023 local elections, former mayor Alak defeated Garro in an historically close election.

Geography

Location

Located in the north-eastern area of the province of Buenos Aires, La Plata is surrounded by Ensenada and Berisso to the northeast, Berazategui and Florencio Varela to the northwest, San Vicente and Coronel Brandsen to the southwest and south, and Magdalena, to the southeast, occupying an area of 893 km2.
The metropolitan area of La Plata includes the neighborhoods of Tolosa, Ringuelet, Manuel B. Gonnet, City Bell, Villa Elisa, Melchor Romero, Abasto, Gorina, José Hernández, Ángel Etcheverry, Arturo Seguí, Los Hornos, Lisandro Olmos, Villa Elvira and Altos de San Lorenzo, all of which have community centers that operate as local delegations.

Climate

La Plata has a humid subtropical climate. During winter, temperatures are cool during the day and cold during the night, even reaching below freezing. The average temperature in the coldest month, July, is. Winters tend to be cloudier than summer, averaging around 10 overcast days from June to August, compared to 6 overcast days from December to February. Summers are warm to hot with a January high of while nighttime temperatures are cooler, averaging. Spring and fall are transition seasons, featuring warm daytime temperatures and cool nighttime temperatures, highly variable with some days reaching above and below. The city is fairly humid, owing to its coastal location, having an average monthly humidity higher than 75%. La Plata receives of precipitation annually, with winters being the drier months and summer the wetter months. On average, La Plata receives 2,285 hours of sunshine a year, or 51% of possible sunshine, ranging from a low of 41% in June and July to 62% in February. The highest temperature recorded was on 14 January 2022 while the lowest temperature recorded was on 14 June 1967.
Snowfall is extremely rare in the city with only 5 major snowfall events: July 1912, 1928, 22 June 1981, 9 July 2007 during the July 2007 Argentine winter storm, and on 6 June 2012.