🇦🇷 Argentina · The Northeast and Mesopotamia
Posadas is the capital of Misiones province and the great gateway to the south of the region. It sits on the left bank of the Paraná river, right opposite the Paraguayan city of Encarnación, to which it is linked by the San Roque González de Santa Cruz international bridge. That border-town condition, a mix of Argentina and Paraguay, of Spanish and Guaraní, gives it a warm, particular identity.
The heart of any visit is its waterfront on the Paraná, one of the longest in the country: kilometres of riverside promenade with beaches, bars, viewpoints, monuments and a privileged view of the river and of Encarnación on the far side. At dusk the waterfront fills with life: families drinking tereré, people exercising and others out for a stroll.
Beyond the shore, Posadas works as the ideal base for exploring southern Misiones: the Jesuit ruins of San Ignacio Miní and the other Guaraní missions are little more than an hour away along RN12, and from here you can easily cross into Paraguay to see Encarnación and the ruins of Trinidad and Jesús. A city to take slowly, to eat river fish in and to use as a springboard towards the Misiones rainforest.
The site of Posadas was first known as Rinconada de San José and then as Trinchera de los Paraguayos (after a military trench Paraguayan troops dug there around 1840). Refounded as Trinchera de San José and made the seat of the Candelaria department in 1870, it took the name Posadas in 1879, in honour of the Supreme Director Gervasio Antonio de Posadas. In 1881 Corrientes ceded it to the Governorate of Misiones and it became its capital; Misiones became a province in 1953. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The province of the Paraná rainforest and the red earth: home to the famous Jesuit-Guaraní missions, today a World Heritage Site, to the yerba mate that peopled its forests, and to the Iguazú Falls, one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.
Read the history of Misiones →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before it was called Posadas, this city was called Trinchera, the trench. That is no small detail: it means that, long before becoming the calm capital whose residents now stroll the country's longest waterfront with a tereré in hand, this place was a contested military post, thrown up by Paraguayan troops to control the crossing over the Paraná. Between that war trench and today's Misiones capital lie almost two centuries of border history, wars and refoundings, which explain why Posadas has such a mixed Argentine-Paraguayan identity today.
The site where Posadas now stands had a long history before it was a city. The area, on the left bank of the Paraná river opposite today's Paraguayan Encarnación, was known in colonial times as Rinconada de San José, within the sphere of the Jesuit-Guaraní missions that stretched across the whole region. It was a natural crossing point on the river, a place of passage and trade between the two banks.
Around 1840, amid the tensions of the time, the Paraguayan government ordered a military trench built here to control and protect the flow of trade along the river. From that came the name by which the place began to be known: 'Trinchera de los Paraguayos'. The Paraguayan presence in the area lasted for years, until the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) completely reshaped the map of the region.
After the War of the Triple Alliance, the area came under the control of Corrientes province. In 1870 the Corrientes government passed the law creating the Candelaria department and designating 'Trinchera de San José' as the seat of its authorities. That date — 8 November 1870 — is usually taken as the founding of the city.
A few years later, in 1879, the Corrientes legislature approved changing the city's name: it stopped being Trinchera de San José and became Posadas. The name is a tribute to Gervasio Antonio de Posadas, who had been Supreme Director of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata in the early years of independence. So an old military trench on the Paraná became a city with a name of its own, and a growing one.
The great institutional turn came a few years later. In 1881, as part of the national reorganisation, Corrientes ceded the city of Posadas to the newly created Governorate (National Territory) of Misiones, and Posadas became its capital. From then on the city grew as the administrative, commercial and port centre of the whole Misiones territory.
For decades Misiones was a National Territory, that is, directly dependent on the central government and without the autonomy of a province. Only in 1953, during the presidency of Juan Domingo Perón, was Misiones made a province, with Posadas confirmed as its capital. The city went along with that process and turned into the political and cultural heart of a province with a unique profile: rainforest, yerba mate, tea, a Jesuit-Guaraní heritage and European immigration.
No look at Posadas and Misiones is complete without Andrés Guacurarí, known as Andresito. A leader of Guaraní-Misiones origin, he was a military and political figure of the early 19th century, commander of Misiones under the influence of José Gervasio Artigas during the wars of independence. He defended Misiones territory against the Portuguese and the Paraguayans and became a symbol of regional identity.
On the Posadas waterfront, an imposing stainless steel monument several metres high remembers him, looking out over the river. Andresito embodies Misiones pride in its Guaraní roots and in a history of its own, distinct from that of Buenos Aires: the history of the Jesuit missions, of cultural mixing and of a living border between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil.
Today's Posadas is a modern, thriving city, capital of Misiones, with one of the longest and most enjoyable waterfronts in Argentina, on the Paraná river. The San Roque González de Santa Cruz international bridge, opened in 1990, links it with Encarnación (Paraguay) and reinforces its character as a border city, where people, trade and cultures cross daily.
That border condition defines its personality: in Posadas, Spanish and Guaraní coexist, as do Argentine and Paraguayan cooking, mate and tereré. The city is also the great base for exploring southern Misiones, above all the Jesuit ruins of San Ignacio Miní and the other Guaraní missions, a World Heritage site. Administrative capital, cultural hub and gateway to the rainforest and to Jesuit history, Posadas sums up much of what makes this province in Argentina's far northeast unique.
Although Posadas as a city is relatively young, the land around it holds one of the most fascinating chapters of colonial American history: the Jesuit-Guaraní missions. Between 1610 and 1767, the Society of Jesus organised, together with Guaraní communities, dozens of mission towns in the region now covering southern Misiones, northern Corrientes and parts of Paraguay and Brazil, among them San Ignacio Miní, barely an hour from today's Posadas.
Those missions were a unique social experiment: they combined Catholic evangelisation with a communal organisation of work and land that, according to much of the historiography, protected the Guaraní for more than a century and a half from the enslavement practised by the Portuguese bandeirantes of São Paulo. Stone churches were built, carved in an unmistakable Baroque-Guaraní style, along with workshops, music schools and even printing presses, in towns that came to house thousands of inhabitants each.
The expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish domains in 1767, ordered by the crown, meant the rapid collapse of that system: the towns were left unprotected, many Guaraní scattered and the buildings were looted or abandoned to the forest, which covered them for more than a century until they were rediscovered and restored in the 20th century. San Ignacio Miní, the best preserved of them all, was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1984, and today it is the obligatory historic trip for anyone passing through Posadas.