San Miguel de Tucumán

The city was first founded on 31 May 1565 by the conquistador Diego de Villarroel, who came south with an expedition from Peru and settled at Ibatín, about 60 km south-west of the present site. Poor water drove the settlers to move in 1685 to La Toma, where the old centre stands today, and the town grew as a waypoint on the route that carried mules, cloth and food north to the silver mines of Potosí.

In the wars of independence Tucumán was on the front line against royalist armies coming from Peru. In September 1812 Manuel Belgrano, ordered by Buenos Aires to fall back to Córdoba, stayed at the request of the townspeople and defeated a royalist army twice the size of his own just outside the city. He then built a circular fortress, La Ciudadela, a kilometre from the main square. Four years later the Congress of Tucumán met in a colonial house in the town and on 9 July 1816 declared the independence of the United Provinces. The house later decayed, was almost entirely demolished in 1903 and was rebuilt to the original plans in the early 1940s.

Bishop José Colombres introduced sugar cane in 1821, and after the railway arrived in the late 19th century sugar mills made the province the "Garden of the Republic". The city added a great park, opened on the centenary of independence in 1916, and its population doubled again by 1930. In 1975 the army's Operativo Independencia against guerrillas in the province brought disappearances and secret detention centres, and since 2008 the city has hosted trials of former military officers for crimes of that era.

For decades Tucumán has been one of the country's cultural centres, shaped above all by the National University of Tucumán, founded in 1914, and by a strong folk-music tradition. The singer Mercedes Sosa, the voice of the nuevo cancionero movement, was born here, as was Leda Valladares, who collected and recorded the folk songs of the north. The Teatro San Martín and the Teatro Alberdi stage plays, concerts, opera and ballet through the year.

Independence is the city's defining story: the hall where the declaration was signed survived the demolition of 1903 and stands inside the rebuilt Casa Histórica, now the national museum of independence, and 9 July, the national holiday, carries special weight here. Most people in the city are Catholic, and there are also evangelical, Jewish and Muslim communities.

Football divides the city. Atlético Tucumán, founded in 1901, plays at the Monumental José Fierro, and San Martín, founded in 1909, at La Ciudadela, and the rivalry between their supporters runs through families and workplaces. Rugby is popular too, and the Monumental has hosted the national team.

The Gran San Miguel de Tucumán, which spreads beyond the city into Yerba Buena, Banda del Río Salí, Alderetes and other neighbouring towns, counted about 800,000 people at the 2010 census and is the fifth-largest urban area in Argentina. The city is the commercial centre of a densely populated province whose irrigated fields grow sugar cane, lemons, rice, tobacco and fruit, and the universities, provincial government and hospitals employ many more.

Growth has been uneven. Yerba Buena on the western slopes has become the prosperous side of the conurbation, with gated communities, shopping centres and the busiest weekend restaurant strip, while informal neighbourhoods have spread on the edges of the city since the 1990s. Sewers, housing and public security are constant subjects of local debate, and coordinating services between the capital and its fast-growing neighbours is a long-running problem.

The day follows the rhythm of the north: an early start, a long break after lunch when many shops close, and busy streets again in the evening, when families walk the plazas and Parque 9 de Julio. In summer the heat pushes people up into the hills of San Javier at weekends, and in winter the dry, sunny days bring life outdoors.

Tucumán is fiercely proud of its empanadas: juicy and filled with beef cut by knife rather than minced, baked in a clay oven or fried. The town of Famaillá, just south of the city, calls itself the national capital of the empanada and holds a national empanada festival each September. Humitas, fresh maize paste steamed or boiled in the husk, and tamales, maize dough filled with meat, are everyday food, and locro, a thick stew of maize, beans, squash and pork, is the dish of cold days and of national holidays.

The surrounding countryside supplies the rest of the table. Tafí del Valle has made cheese since the Jesuits introduced dairy farming there, and quesillo, a fresh cheese, is eaten across the north-west with cane syrup or cayote preserve. The province's lemons, strawberries and blueberries reach the city's markets, and its sugar mills explain a sweet tooth for preserves and pastries.

Regional restaurants and peñas, where folk musicians play late into the night, serve these dishes with grilled meat, and the white Torrontés wine of the Calchaquí Valleys is the local choice. Mate is shared everywhere.