🇦🇷 Argentina · The North (NOA)
San Salvador de Jujuy — "San Salvador de Velazco en el valle de Jujuy", as it was christened in 1593 — is the capital of Argentina's northernmost province and, for many travelers, the real gateway to the deep Northwest. It sits in a valley at about 1,260 meters, hugged by green hills and by the confluence of the Grande and Xibi Xibi (Chico) rivers, a meeting point between the world of the valley, the Quebrada and the Puna. People call it, affectionately, "la Tacita de Plata", the little silver cup.
It's a city many people rush through on the way to Purmamarca or Tilcara, missing a capital with plenty of colonial and patriotic history. Within a few blocks around Plaza Belgrano sit its jewels: the cathedral with its famous gilded baroque pulpit, the Casa de Gobierno where the Bandera Nacional de la Libertad Civil that Belgrano gave the city is kept, the church of San Francisco, the Cabildo and the busy Mercado Central, where the smell of empanadas, humita and tamales says it all.
But above all, Jujuy city is about identity. This is where the Éxodo Jujeño of 1812 happened, when General Manuel Belgrano ordered a whole population to abandon their city and destroy everything so as to leave nothing for the royalist army: a feat the people of Jujuy commemorate every 23 August and that still beats in the soul of the city. And when Andean Carnival arrives, with the unearthing of the devil (the Pujllay) and the comparsas, the capital fills with color, basil and music. Use it as a base, by all means, but give it at least a day: it's worth it.
San Salvador de Jujuy had two failed foundings (Ciudad de Nieva in 1561 and San Francisco de Álava in 1575, both destroyed) before the definitive founding of 19 April 1593 by Francisco de Argañaráz y Murguía. It was a frontier city of the Spanish Empire, the scene of the Éxodo Jujeño of 1812 ordered by Belgrano and the keeper of the Bandera Nacional de la Libertad Civil. For the foundings, the origin of the name "Jujuy", the Exodus and the flag, read our history page on San Salvador de Jujuy.
Read the full history ↓The northernmost province, the Andean roof of Argentina: land of the Quebrada de Humahuaca and the Inca road, of the Omaguaca pucarás, of the heroic Jujuy Exodus of 1812 and of the sugar mills, with a living Andean culture of carnival, coplas and seven-colored hills.
Read the history of Jujuy →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The story of San Salvador de Jujuy is, to a large degree, a story of persistence. The Spanish Crown needed a city in the Jujuy valley to secure the long road linking Tucumán with the silver mines of Upper Peru (Potosí), but the place sat right on the frontier with indigenous peoples — Omaguaca and others — who defended their territory fiercely. So it had to be founded three times.
The first attempt came on 20 August 1561, when Juan Pérez de Zurita established Ciudad de Nieva on the Padilla plateau. It was short-lived: the region's indigenous communities destroyed it. The second attempt came on 13 October 1575, when Pedro de Zárate founded, at Punta Diamante, the city of San Francisco de la Nueva Provincia de Álava. That one didn't last either: a few months later it met the same fate and was burned down.
The definitive founding took place on 19 April 1593, when Don Francisco de Argañaráz y Murguía, at the head of some forty soldiers, founded the city of San Salvador de Velazco en el valle de Jujuy, on the spot where Plaza Belgrano stands today. The name honored the Holy Savior and the governor of Tucumán, Juan Ramírez de Velasco, who had ordered the founding. This time the city took hold and endured, which is why it's known as the "Tacita de Plata", the little silver cup. Every 19 April, Jujuy celebrates its anniversary.
Few Argentine place names have an origin as disputed as Jujuy's. The Spanish wrote the valley's name in different ways — "Xuxuy", "Suxuy" — based on how its original inhabitants pronounced it, and the modern spelling comes from that imperfect transcription. But specialists don't agree on what it originally meant or which language it comes from. Several theories coexist, all plausible and none conclusive.
What is certain is that the name predates the Spanish city: "Jujuy" was the name of the valley long before 1593, and the city took it from the territory that sheltered it. It's a reminder that, beneath the colonial old town, an indigenous name still beats that the region never lost.
Once established, San Salvador de Jujuy became a key piece of the Camino Real linking Buenos Aires and the Río de la Plata with the mining heartland of Upper Peru. Caravans of mules and wagons loaded with goods passed through its streets on the way up to Potosí and came back down with silver: that traffic gave the city its purpose and an economy built on muleteering, trade and the produce of the valley.
But Jujuy was, above all, a frontier city. To the east lay the untamed Chaco, with peoples who resisted the conquest; to the west and north, the Puna and the Quebrada, with Andean communities. For generations the city lived under the tension of that double frontier, with raids, expeditions and a permanent state of defense. That frontier condition tempered the character of its people and shaped its history.
From the colonial period its churches and mansions around Plaza Belgrano still stand: the cathedral — begun in the 17th century and finished in the mid-18th — the church of San Francisco and the Cabildo (rebuilt several times, partly because of the 1863 earthquake). The great artistic treasure of that period is the cathedral's baroque pulpit, carved from ñandubay and cedar and covered in gold leaf in the mid-17th century, a work of the Potosí school with Cusco influence, considered one of the finest pieces of American colonial art in the country.
If one episode defines the identity of Jujuy, it's the Éxodo Jujeño of 1812. In the middle of the war of independence, General Manuel Belgrano had been named head of the Army of the North and set up his command in San Salvador de Jujuy. There he received what was left of the army defeated at Huaqui: hundreds of men without weapons, sick with malaria and demoralized. Meanwhile, the powerful royalist army under Pío Tristán was advancing on the city from Upper Peru.
The First Triumvirate ordered Belgrano to fall back south. Convinced he could not leave the enemy food, livestock or harvests, Belgrano took a brutal decision: evacuate the entire population and apply scorched-earth tactics. On 29 July 1812 he issued a proclamation to the towns of the province, announcing the retreat and asking them to abandon everything. Almost a month later, on 23 August 1812, the march began.
It was a mass exodus and a wrenching one. Men and women, the old and the young, rich and poor, criollos, mestizos and Spaniards loyal to the cause left their homes and set out on a march of hundreds of kilometers towards San Miguel de Tucumán. They burned their fields and their crops, drove off their livestock and destroyed what they couldn't carry, so as to leave nothing for the royalist army. The sacrifice was not in vain: the maneuver wore the enemy down and, shortly afterwards, Belgrano — disobeying the order to keep retreating — won the decisive battle of Tucumán (September 1812) and then the battle of Salta (February 1813). The Éxodo Jujeño is today a symbol of a whole people's commitment to freedom, and every 23 August Jujuy commemorates it with full honors.
Belgrano's recognition of a people who had risked everything came the following year. On 25 May 1813, during the celebrations for the third anniversary of the May Revolution, the general donated a flag to the Cabildo of San Salvador de Jujuy as a prize and a tribute to the heroism shown in the Exodus and in the victories at Tucumán and Salta. It's known as the Bandera Nacional de la Libertad Civil.
It's a white satin flag with the coat of arms of the Assembly of the Year XIII painted at its center. Its name refers to "civil liberty", that is, to what we would now call the rule of law and the equality of citizens before it. It also has a unique value: it's the only flag physically made by Manuel Belgrano to survive to our day with indisputable documentary backing, unlike other historic standards whose origin is uncertain or disputed.
For two centuries the flag was kept in different places around the city — the mother church, the Cabildo, the provincial legislature — and from 1927 it was displayed in the Salón de la Bandera of the Casa de Gobierno. After restoration, in 2021 it was moved to a new space, the interpretation center of the Bandera Nacional de la Libertad Civil, on the upper floor of the Casa de Gobierno. In 2015, the National Congress officially recognized it as a national symbol of great historical significance for all Argentines. Seeing it is one of the most moving moments of any visit to the Jujuy capital.
The San Salvador de Jujuy of the 21st century is a provincial capital that is growing and modernizing, but which remains, above all, the great gateway to the deep Northwest. From here you reach the Quebrada de Humahuaca (a World Heritage Site), Purmamarca and its Cerro de los Siete Colores, the Salinas Grandes, the Puna and the Calilegua Yungas. The city combines its colonial old town with new neighborhoods, universities, the reclaimed Xibi Xibi riverside walk and an intense cultural life.
Nothing expresses the soul of Jujuy better than its Andean Carnival, one of the most vibrant popular festivals in Argentina. Although its epicenter is in the Quebrada, the capital lives it intensely too. The celebration mixes Catholic tradition with the Andean worldview: its central figure is the devil, but not the Christian demon — the Pujllay, a Quechua word meaning "to play". Carnival opens with the unearthing of the devil, when the little figure representing the Pujllay is pulled from a "mojón" and the energy of festive disorder is released; for days the comparsas rule, along with the music of sikuris and brass bands, talcum powder, foam, basil and wine, until it all ends with the burial of the devil, when the figure goes back into the ground until the following year.
Getting to know the history of Jujuy — from the three foundings to the Bandera de la Libertad Civil, from the Exodus of 1812 to the Pujllay of Carnival — is to understand why this valley city, hemmed in by hills, is far more than a place to pass through: it's one of the keys to understanding the identity of northern Argentina.