Plaza General San Martín
Historic park of towering ombu and jacaranda trees on the site of a former fort, slave depot and bullring.
This guide to Plaza General San Martin in Buenos Aires traces the ground's turns from a British-run slave depot to a bullring built for a Spanish prince's birthday in 1801, packed to nine thousand for the fights that erupted here when British troops invaded in 1807. It follows General Jose de San Martin as he drilled raw recruits into his Mounted Grenadiers on this same field in 1812, before the regiment marched off to cross the Andes, and the slave trade's abolition and the bullring's demolition that followed within decades. Landscape architect Charles Thays planted the gomero and jacaranda trees still shading the plaza in 1889.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.