Ins and outs
Best time to visit
Tourist information
Background
The biggest festival of the year,
Fiesta de la Vendimia
, is held from mid-February to mid-March to celebrate the start of the wine harvest. The festival includes a carnival queen, a procession of floats and outdoor extravaganzas in the park - but little winetasting.
A parallel event is the less-promoted but equally entertaining
Gay Vendimia Festival
with parties, shows and the crowning of the Festival Queen. Bodegas can be visited all year round and at harvest time (March and April) you'll see the machinery in action. If you're heading beyond Mendoza to explore the landscape, trekking in the mountains is only possible from November to April, when the snow has melted. The most pleasant time for trekking is December to February, which is the only feasible season for trekking at higher altitudes. Skiing at Los Penitentes (on the road to Chile) is from July to October, though Las Leñas further south is open from mid-June.
Mendoza has a well developed tourism infrastructure, with tourist offices all over the city.
For city information, try www.ciudaddemendoza.gov.ar. Another very useful site, designed by English expats, is www.welcometomendoza.com.ar.
Mendoza was founded by Pedro del Castillo in 1561, when he was sent from the Spanish colony in Chile by Captain General García Hurtado de Mendoza to cross the 4000-m pass over the Andes, and start a new city. Mediterranean fruits were introduced to the region 
ith modern-day Argentina.
Sightssoon afterwards, and thrived in its sunny climate, aided by pre-Hispanic irrigation channels
that are still used today to water the dry lands with abundant snow-melt from the Andes. The city's wealth grew, although it remained largely isolated throughout the colonial period, being governed from Chile and having little contact with modern-day Argentina. The city's greatest blow came on Easter Saturday in 1861 when it was completely destroyed in a devastating earthquake which killed some 4000 of its 12,000 inhabitants. Very
quickly, a new centre was built by the French architect Ballofet, several blocks to the southwest of the original. This modern city was designed with low, quake-proof buildings and broad avenues with many plazas to aid evacuation in case of further tremors. Plane trees were planted on all the streets, watered by a network of irrigation channels which still gush with water every spring. Nowadays, Mendoza's main industry
is wine, though a busy university and, increasingly, tourism help to sustain its wealth and lively character.
The large
Plaza Independencia
is a popular meeting place for
mendocinos
with its shady acacia and plane trees and pretty fountains.
In the middle is the small
Museo de Arte Moderno
originally designed to be
an emergency bunker for victims of earth- quakes, it now houses temporary exhibitions.
On the western side is the new and luxurious
Park Hyatt Hotel
www.mendoza.park. hyatt.com
, once a splendid 1920s palace where Juan Perón and Evita stayed. The eastern side of the park is filled with a handicrafts market at weekends, where Sarmiento runs to San Martín. Around the four corners of this central plaza, just a block further out, are four smaller plazas. The most attractive is the
Plaza España
, to the southeast. Its floor and benches are beautifully tiled and it's a lovely place to sit under the trees and gaze at the rather sentimental mural displaying historical episodes as well as scenes from
Don Quijote
and the famous gaucho poem,
Martín Fierro
. Four blocks west along Montevideo, with its pretty Italianate and colonial-style buildings, is
Plaza Italia
, with wonderful mature
tipa
trees. Nearby it's worth visiting the small
Museo del Pasado Cuyano
, housed
in a beautiful 1873 mansion owned by the Civit family. There's lots of San Martín memorabilia,
and an exquisite Spanish 15th-century carved altarpiece. The director will give you an excellent tour and insights into the city's history.
The original city centre, destroyed by the earthquake in 1861, was located 12 blocks to the northeast of today's Plaza Independencia, and is now known as the
Area Fundacional
.
Here there is a broad tranquil plaza and a beautifully designed
museum
Alberdi and Videla Castillo,
whose glass
floor reveals continuing excavations of foundations from the old Cabildo and the buildings that followed, with an array of objects salvaged from the rubble. The informative
free tour is highly recommended to give you a picture of Mendoza's history. Under the plaza you can see the first fountain to bring running water to the city, and nearby, at the corner of Ituzaingó and Beltrán are the ruins of the Jesuit
Iglesia de San Francisco
.
Plaza Pellegrini
is another attractive little plaza, at Avenida Alem y Avenida San Juan, and there's a small antiques market on Friday at lunchtime.
The great
Parque General San Martín offers
350 ha of lavishly planted parkland designed by famous Argentine landscape architect Charles Thays, with sports facilities, a big lake where regattas are held, a sports stadium and an amphitheatre. On a hill in the park is the
Cerro de la Gloria
, popular with paragliders, giving splendid views of the Andes to the west. There's also a monument to San Martín, showing various episodes of his leading his army across the Andes to liberate Argentina and Chile from the Spanish. From the east end of the park, on Avenida Libertador, an hourly bus ('Oro Negro') runs to the top of the Cerro de la Gloria - otherwise it's a 45 minute walk. On the side of the Cerro is the
Jardín Zoológico
www.zoo.mendoza.gov.ar
, one of the country's best zoos. There's a helpful
tourist information office
next to the main gates. The lakeside restaurant
Terrazas del Lago
is open from breakfast to the early hours of the morning. At the south end of the lake is the
Museo de Ciencias Naturales y Antropológicas
, with an ancient female mummy amongst its fossils and stuffed animals. Not far from the Area Fundacional, at the southern end of
Parque O'Higgins
, kids might enjoy the small aquarium
Acuario Municipal
. Across the street is a small
Serpentario
with plenty of snakes and lizards.
The city's best art gallery is in the nearby suburb of
Luján de Cuyo
, where there's a small, charming collection of Argentine paintings in the house where Fernando Fader painted his beautiful murals, at the
Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes.
There are also sculptures in the lovely gardens.
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This is edited copy from Footprint Handbooks. For comprehensive details (incl address, tel no, directions, opening times and prices) please refer to book or individual chapter PDF
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