Parque Lezama

In front of you is the statue of Pedro de Mendoza, the conquistador who founded the first Buenos Aires. Exactly where is a mystery, and this park is one of the candidates.

1A doomed founding

In 1536 Mendoza reached the Río de la Plata with a large expedition and set up a settlement he called Santa María del Buen Ayre. Some historians place it near these bluffs, but archaeologists and historians are still arguing about the spot. What's certain is that the venture was a disaster: attacks by Indigenous peoples and, above all, hunger decimated the settlers.

The Bavarian soldier Ulrich Schmidl, who was there, wrote that the hunger was so great that some ate the flesh of the dead.

Mendoza, ill, sailed back to Spain and died on the voyage. The settlement was abandoned in 1541. The lasting city was founded by Juan de Garay in 1580, further north.

2From estate to park

Centuries later, these bluffs were a private estate. José Gregorio de Lezama bought it in 1857, and in 1894 his widow, Ángela de Álzaga, sold it to the city for a symbolic price, on condition it became a park named after her husband. The mansion has housed the National Historical Museum since 1897. The Mendoza monument, by Juan Carlos Oliva Navarro, was unveiled in 1937. Ernesto Sabato set much of On Heroes and Tombs here.

3What to look for

• The carved slab behind Mendoza, with its Indigenous figure.
• The blue domes of the Russian Orthodox cathedral, from 1901.
• The bluff, the old edge of the river.