San Ignacio Miní

In terms of preservation, including the architectural and sculptural details that typify the style known as “Guaraní baroque,” San Ignacio Miní may be the most outstanding surviving example of the 30 missions built by the Jesuits in a territory that now comprises parts of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. It’s also a tourist favorite for its accessibility, surrounded as it is by the present-day village of San Ignacio.

San Ignacio’s centerpiece was Italian architect Juan Brasanelli’s monumental church, 74 meters long and 24 meters wide, with red sandstone walls two meters wide and ceramic-tile floors. Overlooking the settlement’s plaza, decorated by Guaraní artisans, it’s arguably the finest remaining structure of its kind; the adjacent compound included a kitchen, dining room, classrooms, and workshops. The priests’ quarters and the cemetery were also here, while more than 200 Guaraní residences—whose numbers reached 4,000 at the mission’s zenith in 1733—surrounded the plaza.

Founded in 1609 in present-day Paraguay, San Ignacio Guazú moved to the Río Yabebiry in 1632 and to its present location in 1697, but declined rapidly with expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767. In 1817, Paraguayan troops under the paranoid dictator Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia razed what remained of the settlement.

Rediscovered in 1897, San Ignacio gained some notoriety after poet Leopoldo Lugones led an expedition to the area in 1903, but restoration work had to wait until the 1940s. Parts of the ruins are still precarious, supported by sore-thumb scaffolding that obscures the essential harmony of the complex but does not affect individual features.

Visitors enter the grounds through the Centro de Interpretación Regional, a mission museum (Alberdi between Rivadavia and Bolívar, 6 a.m.–7 p.m. daily, US$1). A nightly light-and-sound show, lasting 50 minutes, costs an additional US$1. Outside the exit, on Rivadavia, there’s a growing number of eyesore souvenir stands that detract from the mission’s impact.

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Casa de Horacio Quiroga
One of the first Latin American writers to reject the city for the frontier, novelist, storyteller, and poet Horacio Quiroga (1878–1937) spent his prime of life in his self-built house overlooking the Paraná, only a short distance southeast of downtown San Ignacio. While he made writing his career, Quiroga also worked as a cotton farmer in the Chaco and as a charcoal maker in San Ignacio, and took notable photographs of San Ignacio’s Jesuit ruins, incorporating his outside interests into his literary work.

His life plagued by violence—Quiroga accidentally shot a youthful friend to death, and his stepfather and first wife both committed suicide—the writer lived here from 1910 to 1917, and again from 1931 until his own cyanide-induced death. The home itself is now a museum with furniture from the 1930s, photographs of his life, and personal belongings. This was not Quiroga’s first house, a replica of which (built for director Nemesio Juárez’s film Historias de Amor, de Locura y de Muerte (Stories of Love, Madness and Death, 1996) stands nearby.

The grounds of Quiroga’s house (Avenida Quiroga s/n, US$.75) are open 7 a.m.–dusk daily.

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Other Practicalities
San Ignacio has a new Oficina de Información Turística at the junction of RN 12 and Avenida Sarmiento.

Buses arrive and leave from the Terminal de Ómnibus at the west end of Avenida Sarmiento, but it’s also possible to flag down coaches along RN 12. The main destinations are Posadas (US$1.50, one hour) and Puerto Iguazú (US$7, three hours), but note that milk-run buses are considerably slower than express services.