Current Time in San Salvador de Jujuy, Argentina

San Salvador de Jujuy lies in the far north-west of Argentina, close to the Bolivian border, in a green valley where the Rio Grande and the Xibi Xibi meet at an altitude of around twelve hundred metres. It is the capital of Jujuy Province and has roughly three hundred thousand inhabitants in its metropolitan area. Subtropical forest covers the surrounding hills, while an hour to the north and west the land climbs into the dry, dazzling canyons of the Quebrada de Humahuaca and then to the high Andean plateau.

The Spanish founded the city in 1593, after two earlier attempts had been destroyed by the indigenous peoples of the region. It became a staging post on the royal road between Buenos Aires and the silver mines of Potosi, and mule trains, tax collectors and missionaries passed through it for two centuries. Its defining moment came in August 1812, during the wars of independence, when General Manuel Belgrano ordered the entire population to abandon the city and destroy everything that could be of use before the advancing royalist army. The Jujuy Exodus is commemorated every year with processions and re-enactments, and the flag Belgrano later presented to the city is preserved in the government house.

The cathedral on the main square is the city's treasure. Behind a plain facade it contains a carved and gilded wooden pulpit of the seventeenth century, made by indigenous craftsmen under Spanish direction, generally considered one of the finest colonial baroque works in South America. The old cabildo, the church of San Francisco, the French-influenced government palace with its sculptures and its wrought-iron staircase, and the shaded Plaza Belgrano make a compact and attractive historic centre. Just outside the city, hot springs at Termas de Reyes fill pools in a dramatic mountain gorge.

Culturally Jujuy is the most Andean province of Argentina. Quechua and Aymara heritage runs through the music of charangos, erkes and drums, through the copla singing and box drums heard at festivals, through offerings to Pachamama each August, and through food such as empanadas, humita, tamales and locro. The provincial carnival, with its ritual unearthing and burial of a devil figure, is one of the great popular festivals of the country.

The city is the gateway to the Quebrada de Humahuaca, a World Heritage cultural landscape whose painted hillsides at Purmamarca, artisan villages at Tilcara and colonial churches draw travellers from around the world, and to the vast Salinas Grandes salt flats.

Sugar, tobacco, steel, mining, including lithium extraction in the highlands, and tourism support the economy. An international airport, the highway north to the Bolivian frontier and a scenic tourist train serve the region, and the National University of Jujuy is based in the city.

Colonial, Andean and spectacularly situated, San Salvador de Jujuy is the perfect introduction to northern Argentina.