Asuncion: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Asunción was founded as a fort on the Paraguay River on 15 August 1537, and for decades it was the only Spanish base in the whole southern half of the continent — Buenos Aires itself was refounded from here in 1580. This walk follows the old town from the night of independence to the hill where the port workers lived. Two hours, flat until the stairs of Loma San Jerónimo. Start by 8 a.m. from October to March, and do it on a weekday: on Sunday everything here is shut.
The ten best sights in Asuncion
1Panteón Nacional de los HéroesFree; come on the hour for the changing of the guard, and keep shoulders covered inside
2Palacio de LópezThe presidential palace: seen best from the river side at dusk, when it is lit; tours inside only on announced open days
3Catedral MetropolitanaOften closed outside mass times; mornings are the best chance to see the silver altar
4Museo del BarroThe best museum in the country — indigenous feather art, folk ceramics and contemporary art; in a residential street far east, go by taxi; closed Sunday and Monday
5Casa de la IndependenciaSmall and free; the alley beside it is the one the conspirators used on the night of 14 May 1811
6Teatro Municipal Ignacio A. PaneCheck the programme on the door: concerts and ballet at local prices, often a few dollars
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7Centro Cultural El Cabildo
The old parliament building, now a free museum and cultural centre with a view of the bay from the upper floor
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8Museo de las Memorias
The former torture centre of the Stroessner police; hard to visit and essential to understand the country; check opening hours before going
9Iglesia de la Santísima TrinidadA church from the López years in a quiet northern barrio; combine it with the botanical garden nearby
10Manzana de la RiveraA whole block of restored old houses facing the palace, with a free city museum and a café in the courtyard
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Asuncion →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Asuncion:
Free walking tours in Asuncion
Mother of cities
Asunción was founded as a fort on the Paraguay River on 15 August 1537, and for decades it was the only Spanish base in the whole southern half of the continent — Buenos Aires itself was refounded from here in 1580. This walk follows the old town from the night of independence to the hill where the port workers lived. Two hours, flat until the stairs of Loma San Jerónimo. Start by 8 a.m. from October to March, and do it on a weekday: on Sunday everything here is shut.
- Casa de la Independencia · This colonial house of 1772 is where the officers met on the night of 14 May 1811, and by morning the Spanish governor had handed over power without a shot fired. They slipped in and out through the narrow alley beside it, which is still called the Callejón Histórico.
- Catedral Metropolitana · Asunción became a bishopric in 1547, making it one of the oldest dioceses in South America. The present building is from the 1840s, raised under Carlos Antonio López after the earlier church was lost to the river bank that kept collapsing beneath it.
- El Cabildo · For about a century and a half this building was the seat of Paraguay’s Congress, until the members moved in 2003 to the glass building next door. Today it is a free museum, and the upper floor looks straight over the bay where the founders tied their boats.
- Palacio de López · Francisco Solano López had this palace built from 1857 by the English architect Alonso Taylor, but he barely lived in it: in 1869, during the war, Brazilian troops occupied it and used it as their headquarters. Since the end of the nineteenth century it has been the seat of the president.
- Casa Viola, Manzana de la Rivera · The Manzana de la Rivera is a block of nine old houses facing the palace that was saved from demolition in the late 1980s. Its oldest house, Casa Viola, is a colonial building from the eighteenth century and now holds the free museum of the city’s memory.
- Loma San Jerónimo · The hill above the port is one of the oldest barrios of the city, built in the nineteenth century by boatmen and port workers, many of them Italian immigrants. Since the 2000s its residents have painted houses and stairways as a community tourism project, and they still live in every one of the houses.
Two wars and a dictator
Paraguay is the country that lost the most in the bloodiest war in South American history: between 1864 and 1870 it fought Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay together, and by most estimates more than half of its population died. Sixty years later it won the Chaco War against Bolivia, and then lived thirty-five years under Alfredo Stroessner. This walk passes the places where the city remembers all three. Two and a half hours, flat; the Museo de las Memorias is heavy, keep it for the end.
- Estación Central del Ferrocarril · The railway from here to Paraguarí was one of the first in South America; its first stretch opened in 1861, built with British engineers hired by Carlos Antonio López. The locomotive Sapucai of 1861 still stands inside — evidence of a Paraguay that tried to become an industrial power just before it was wiped out.
- Plaza Uruguaya · The square took its name in 1885, in thanks to Uruguay, the first of the three enemies to forgive Paraguay its war debt and give back the trophies it had taken. Today its shade holds the second-hand book stalls of the city.
- Panteón Nacional de los Héroes · Building began in 1863 as an oratory modelled on Les Invalides in Paris; the war stopped it, and it was only finished in 1936, after the Chaco War. Inside lie both Presidents López, Marshal Estigarribia who led the Chaco victory, and two unknown soldiers, and soldiers stand guard at the door day and night.
- Plaza de los Héroes · The main square is really four squares joined together, and it has been the stage of every political moment of the city. On weekday mornings it fills with office workers, street vendors and men selling chipa from baskets, and on Sunday it is almost empty.
- Palacio Legislativo · The glass Congress was a gift of Taiwan, opened in 2003 — Paraguay is one of the few countries that still recognise Taipei rather than Beijing. In March 1999 young protesters were shot in the square in front of it after the murder of the vice-president, and in March 2017 crowds set fire to part of the building over a plan to allow presidential re-election.
- Museo de las Memorias · This house was "La Técnica", the office of the political police of Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled from 1954 to 1989 — the longest dictatorship in South America in the twentieth century. In December 1992 the lawyer Martín Almada, once tortured himself, found tons of police files in a station in Lambaré; this "Archive of Terror" proved the cooperation between the dictatorships of Operation Condor.
Clay, herbs and tereré
Paraguay is the only country in the Americas where most people speak an indigenous language — Guaraní is spoken by the large majority, alongside Spanish. This route goes looking for that living Paraguay: the market where herbs for tereré are pounded, the museum of indigenous and folk art, the green north and the river at sunset. It is not a walk: half a day with four short Bolt or Uber rides between stops. Start at the market at 8, end at the Costanera at sunset.
- Mercado 4 · Dozens of blocks of stalls, where the herb sellers pound fresh "yuyos" — mint, lemongrass, cedrón — into the cold water of tereré. In 2020 UNESCO inscribed the practices of tereré and its medicinal herbs on its list of intangible heritage.
- Museo del Barro · Founded by the artist Carlos Colombino and the critic Ticio Escobar, who later became Paraguay’s minister of culture, the museum puts indigenous feather art, folk ceramics and contemporary art under one roof, as equals. The feather headdresses of the Chaco peoples are its heart.
- Paseo Carmelitas, Villa Morra · Villa Morra is where the city moved in the late twentieth century, when the old centre emptied. Lunch here is the place to try a lomito árabe, the wrap brought by Lebanese and Syrian immigrants that has become an Asunción staple.
- Jardín Botánico · This was the country estate of Carlos Antonio López, and his family house still stands in the park. The garden was created here in 1914 by the German botanist Karl Fiebrig, one of the scientists who catalogued the plants of Paraguay.
- Iglesia de la Santísima Trinidad · Carlos Antonio López had this church built in the 1850s near his estate, and it was where he was first buried in 1862, before his remains were moved to the Panteón. Its painted interior is one of the few that survived the nineteenth century.
- Costanera · The river promenade opened in the 2010s on land reclaimed from the flood plain, where the poorest barrios had always flooded. At sunset it fills with families, joggers and thermoses — tereré is drunk all day, cold, passed around in one shared guampa.
Getting to Asuncion and getting around
- Silvio Pettirossi International Airport · In Luque, about 15 km from the centre; 25-40 minutes by Bolt or Uber depending on traffic, and the app is cheaper than the airport taxi rank
- Terminal de Ómnibus · All long-distance buses: Encarnación about 6 hours, Ciudad del Este about 5, and buses to Buenos Aires and Brazil; buy the ticket at the company window, not from touts
- Estación Central del Ferrocarril · No trains run any more — this is the 1860s station of one of South America’s first railways, now a museum with the 1861 locomotive Sapucai inside
Cheap eats in Asuncion
Seven counters where Asunción eats standing up. Paraguayan food is built on manioc (mandi’o), maize and cheese: chipa is the ring-shaped cheese bread sold from baskets everywhere, mbejú a flat manioc-starch and cheese cake, and sopa paraguaya is, despite its name, a solid cornbread — the story says a cook of Carlos Antonio López put in too much flour. Prices are in guaraníes; a chipa is a few thousand.
- Lido Bar · Sopa paraguaya and fish soup at the counter, about 20,000-40,000 Gs
- Bolsi · Chipa guasu and milanesa at the bar, about 25,000-45,000 Gs
- Plaza de los Héroes · Chipa from the baskets, about 3,000-5,000 Gs
- Mercado 4 · Mbejú and a cocido at the market stalls, about 10,000-15,000 Gs
- Paseo Carmelitas · Lomito árabe from the counters around Villa Morra, about 30,000-40,000 Gs
- Costanera · Mosto — fresh sugar-cane juice — from the carts, about 5,000 Gs
- Plaza Uruguaya · Empanadas and pastel mandi’o from the corner kiosks, about 7,000-10,000 Gs each
Museums in Asuncion
Asunción’s museums tell of a country that closed itself off, lost almost everything in one war and lived through a long dictatorship — and of the indigenous art that survived all of it.
- Museo del Barro · Indigenous, folk and contemporary art
- Museo de las Memorias · The Stroessner police headquarters
- Casa de la Independencia · The house of the night of 14 May 1811
- Museo Ferroviario · The 1861 locomotive Sapucai
Nature and day trips near Asuncion
Asunción sits on a wide bend of the Paraguay River, with a bird reserve across its bay; half an hour east the hills of the Cordillera ring Lake Ypacaraí, the weekend escape of the whole capital.
- Bahía de Asunción · Birds on the sandbank across the bay
- Lago Ypacaraí · The lake of the most famous Paraguayan song
- Cerro Lambaré · The widest view over the river
- Jardín Botánico · Shade and old trees in the north
Things to do in Asuncion with kids
With children: an old steam engine, a zoo in a president’s garden, a football museum with the real trophies and a long riverside promenade.
- Museo del Fútbol Sudamericano · The Copa Libertadores and Copa América trophies
- Museo Ferroviario · A steam engine from 1861
- Zoológico de Asunción · Jaguars and tapirs under old trees
- Parque Ñu Guasú · Big park for bikes and picnics near the airport
Live music in Asuncion
Paraguay’s sound is the harp and the guitar: the polka paraguaya, and the slower guarania, which the composer José Asunción Flores created in Asunción in 1925.
- Teatro Municipal · Concerts, ballet and harp evenings
- Manzana de la Rivera · Free concerts in the courtyard
- El Cabildo · Chamber music and talks in the old parliament
Nightlife in Asuncion
The old centre empties after dark; the night is in Villa Morra and around Paseo Carmelitas, and it starts late — few bars fill before eleven. Go and return by Bolt or Uber.
- Paseo Carmelitas · Bars and terraces in one block
- Villa Morra · Restaurants and late bars
- Costanera · Weekend evenings by the river
Frequently asked questions about Asuncion
What is there to see in Asuncion?
The top sights in Asuncion are Panteón Nacional de los Héroes, Palacio de López and Catedral Metropolitana. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Asuncion?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Asuncion without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Asuncion?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Asuncion, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: Mother of cities.
How do you get to Asuncion and get around?
The main ways are Silvio Pettirossi International Airport, Terminal de Ómnibus and Estación Central del Ferrocarril. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Asuncion, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Asuncion that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Asuncion for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.