Tres de Febrero Park

This guide to Tres de Febrero Park in Buenos Aires opens on the private estate of Juan Manuel de Rosas, the strongman who ruled the city for decades before an army led by his rival defeated him in eighteen fifty-two. You'll hear how his seized land sat idle until a congressman and president Domingo Sarmiento pushed to turn it into public ground instead. It traces the French landscape architect Carlos Thays, who arrived in the eighteen nineties to drain the old marsh and lay out the groves and lakes still here. Walk the paths in spring to catch the jacaranda trees the guide describes turning them violet.