Rosario: where the Argentine flag was born

Birthplace of Che Guevara and the place where Manuel Belgrano first hoisted the Argentine flag, Rosario faces the Paraná River with a long waterfront.

The center can be explored on foot; a bike is useful for the longer waterfront.

The National Monument to the Flag, an imposing Art Deco complex completed in 1957, marks the exact point where Belgrano raised the Argentine flag for the first time in 1812.

A few blocks away, a plaque on a Calle Entre Ríos building marks the house where Ernesto "Che" Guevara was born in 1928, although the family left the city when he was still a child.

Continuing you reach the Independence Park, a nineteenth-century park designed by landscape architect Carlos Thays, with a rose garden and artificial lake.

Toward evening, the Costanera, the embankment along the Paraná, fills with runners and families among river beaches and outdoor venues.

Despite the symbolic bond with Rosario, Che Guevara lived in the city only for the first months of his life: his childhood and adolescence unfolded elsewhere, between Buenos Aires and Córdoba.

The Paraná, several kilometers wide right at Rosario's height, permits summer river bathing on sand beaches that many visitors do not expect to find so far from the sea.