Explore Bahia Blanca | ARGENTINA - South America

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Bahía Blanca is a city by the Atlantic Ocean, in the southwest of the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is the seat of government of the Bahía Blanca Partido. It had 301,572 inhabitants according to the 2010 census. It is the principal city in the Greater Bahía Blanca area.
The city has an important seaport with a depth of 45 feet (15 m), kept constant upstream almost all along the length of the bay, where the Napostá Stream drains.
Bahía Blanca means "White Bay". The name is due to the typical color of the salt covering the soil surrounding the shores. The bay (which is an estuary) was seen by Ferdinand Magellan during his first circumnavigation of the world on the order of Charles I of Spain in 1520, looking for a canal connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean along the coasts of South America.
The city was founded as a fortress on 11th April 1828 by Colonel Ramón Estomba under the orders of Brigadier-General and subsequent Governor of Buenos Aires, Juan Manuel de Rosas, being named Fortaleza Protectora Argentina (Argentine Protective Fortress), intended to protect inhabitants from cattle rustlers, and also to guard the coast against the Brazilian navy, which had landed in the area the previous year. It was visited by Charles Darwin during his travels through South America in September 1833.

The city has the common features of those founded by the Spanish and their descendants: a main square at the centre surrounded by relevant buildings the likes of The City Hall and the Church (located on opposite although facing sides of the main square). Buildings of administrative importance also surround the main square or are located nearby. The planning which took place before its foundation and during its early development conceived streets parallel to the sides of the main square.[citation needed] Almost all the blocks are then rectangular in shape. As the city developed the streets were extended and more rectangular blocks were added at the edges. The Administration of the City decided then to observe a plan of development probably about 1960, when it might have been ruled that further developments would follow established criteria according to their purpose: permanent dwellers, public places, industries. Most of the city has terraced houses although detached houses surrounded by extensive gardens are well developed in some areas such as barrio Palihue, with an adjacent golf course at Club de Golf Palihue Barrio Patagonia and country clubs for permanent and also for week-end dwellers were designed and developed at the outskirts of the city.

The architecture of Bahía Blanca is notable as well. Public buildings such as the seat of the Banco de la Nación, Bolsa de Comercio de Bahía Blanca (Chamber of Commerce, the stock exchange), the main Post Office, the former building of the local newspaper La Nueva Provincia,[16] the City Hall, the Rectorate and academic departments of Universidad del Sur, its 'Casa de la Cultura', Teatro Municipal (Opera House of the city), Biblioteca Rivadaviaand Club Argentino, amongst others, are well-considered pieces of architecture, most of them extremely well preserved. Some of them are of French neoclassical influence (L'École des Beaux Arts, Paris).

There are excellent monuments and pieces of sculpture scattered all along the city: in the streets, main buildings and green spaces such as Caronti's bust, facing the City Hall, the Memorial to Bernardino Rivadavia, at the centre of the main square, Fuente de los Ingleses and Memorial of the Israeli community, in the same square. The statue of José de San Martín, in Parque de Mayo, the sculpture group of Lola Mora in the fountain at the front of Universidad del Sur, the memorial to Giuseppe Garibaldi, the statue of Isabel I of Castile in front of the bus station, donated by the Government of Spain (no such pieces are donated to non capital cities as it has been this case, enhancing the importance of the local Spanish descendants), the pieces which decorate the frontispieces of Banco de la Nación, Edificio Banco Provincia, to the side of the City Hall, Saint George and the Dragon of the former electrical power plant of Ingeniero White in the Port, the ones of the former building of La Nueva Provincia and those of the cathedral are unique, as well as the modern art ones which form the group of Paseo de las Esculturas, indeed remarkable. Although not a sculpture, the mural mosaic of Colegio Don Bosco, on the corner of Vieytes and Moreno streets, by Aurelio Friedrich a local plastic artist is to be mentioned. All of them do enrich the architectural, artistic and cultural patrimony and heritage of the city. Multiple green spaces have been created in the city: Plaza Rivadavia (its main square), Parque de Mayo, Paseo de las Esculturas, Parque Independencia, Plaza 9 de Julio, and Plaza Villa Mitre, are the most familiar ones.