City Tour in Maipú

Only twenty minutes stand between the City of Mendoza and an urban settlement that has always been dedicated to winegrowing activities: Maipú. Quiet and pretty from all points of view, walking the City of Maipú lets visitors find a worldwide known winemaking tradition with wineries like former Giol, López, La Rural or new Trapiche, which have not lost their glow, today mixed with novel tourist family businesses also devoted to wine, especially malbec.

In addition to wine, the Tourist Office in Maipú has organized new attractions in the last few years. Among them, the Olive Road stands out. It joins a group of venues dedicated to growing olives and making oil. They offer visitors guided tours every hour in which they show everything about this particular industry that is becoming more and more popular all round the world.

These venues are mostly family undertakings passed down from generation to generation, a trade that parents teach their children and so on.

The History of Maipú

Don José Alberto de Ozamis and friar Manuel Apolinario Vázquez set March 31, 1861 as the date of the foundation of the City of Maipú. Ever since, the metropolis and its surrounding have been the home of a great deal of visionary and undertaking men who arrived from the most unusual corners in the world to make fortune in America.

Spaniards, Italian and Swiss immigrants saw this booming city as a chance to develop what had been denied to them in Europe. The temperate arid climate with hot trends was ideal for the vine and the olive plantations. Thus, thousands and thousands of hectares were sown.

Faith, both to thank good crops and successful harvests and to pray for God’s protection over everything men did on these soils, was shown at a great number of churches and parishes still visited by the locals and the visitors to the city.

Some of these churches are Our Lady of Candelaria, the church of Mercy, the Sanctuary of Mary, Aid of Christians and the church of Our Lady of Traffic. Others include Saint Roch’s church, Our Lady of the Rosary’s Chapel and even the famous Christ of the Vines, an entire institution for the winegrowing family.

In the center of the city, 12 de Febrero Square was named after the date on which the Battle of Chacabuco was fought by General San Martín on Chilean soil. This square was created when the city was founded and passer-bys may find a shoot of the historical pine of San Lorenzo, the busts of the founders of the city and soil from the historical field of Maipú.

But the most eye-catching feature is the Flower Clock, the first in the Province of Mendoza. It was inaugurated in 2006 and is one of the few existing in the country.

The Museum of Wine and the Harvest is another interesting attraction worth visiting in the city, as it houses the history of Argentinian wine, declared official national beverage in Argentina.


The Future Is Here

We mentioned that Maipú was a calm city, with significant winegrowing movement but it still remains silent in the afternoon, when it is time for a nap, and the local denizens still have time to say hello to one another. But there is a monumental construction that marked a turning point in the life of Mendoza: the Arena Maipú Resort and the majestic Esplendor Hotel.

This place has come to be referred to as “Las Vegas in Argentina”. It is a luxury offered by the city today. Casinos, restaurants, conventions room, spa, cinema and stadium for live shows by international artists invite everyone to have constant fun in a city in Mendoza where we can find everything.