Elegant in their Simplicity

Elegant in their Simplicity

In its colonial heyday, Asunción was the administrative center of southern South America. It still retains some of its pre-independence grandeur, but today the most compelling architectural attractions are the ruins of some 30 Jesuit missions in the southeast. Although Spanish missionaries came to what is now Paraguay in 1588, little remains of their earliest dwellings. What you'll find are fascinating traces of 17th-century reducciónes (literally, "reductions"). Here the Jesuits organized the indigenous Guaranís -- a nomadic people -- into farming communities, and worked with them side-by-side, providing vocational training and religious and secular education.

You can do a mission tour in your own car -- if you don't mind driving on unpaved or flooded roads and you can cope with motorists who don't obey traffic rules. The benefit of having your own car is that you can take it easy and spend a few days exploring. If you prefer not to drive, you can opt for a hurried day with an Asunción tour operator. The sites you'll see run the spectrum -- from the well-preserved San Cosme y Damián, where many of the structures still serve the community, to the never finished, but intriguing, abandoned structures at Jesús.