Cordoba Audio Tours

Cordoba was founded in 1573 at the foot of the Sierras Chicas, about 700 kilometers northwest of Buenos Aires, and it has maintained a chip on its shoulder about the capital ever since. The Jesuits arrived in 1599 and established the National University of Cordoba in 1613, making it the fourth-oldest university in the Americas and the oldest in Argentina. The nickname La Docta, meaning the learned one, has stuck, and with 105,000 students still enrolled it is not an idle boast. The Jesuit Block at the city center, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000, contains colonial buildings that have been in continuous educational use for four centuries.

The 1918 University Reform movement, which spread across Latin America and challenged the feudal structure of academic institutions, began right here when students occupied the university and demanded autonomy.

The Cordobazo of 1969, a violent uprising of workers and students that shook the military government, put the city on the map as a place that takes its politics as seriously as its learning. In between those moments, Cordoba has been building cars (Renault has had a factory here since 1955), developing aircraft (the state aerospace company FAMA was established in 1927), and lately producing software engineers and startup founders faster than Buenos Aires can absorb them.