Alta Gracia travel guide

Alta Gracia’s great attraction is the wonderful 17th-century Estancia Jesuítica Alta Gracia , whose church, residential buildings and small lake make a splendid hill-top centre to the town, around the scrappy Plaza Solares. The rather tawdry main commercial area spills down Belgrano, with everything you need, but no charm whatsoever. Head instead to the pretty residential area west of centre El Alto, where the most appealing restaurants are to be found. El Alto was built when the British came here to build the housing which the locals describe as typically ‘British’: two stories with corrugated tin roofs. The rather grand Hotel Sierras (http://www.hojoar.com) stylishly built in 1907 as Argentina’s first casino, was made popular by the rich upper classes who flocked to the area for the summer in the 1920s when Alta Gracia was in its heyday. It has been restored and now is a four-star hotel and casino. There’s also an attractive golf course in this area, whose club has one of the town’s most recommendable restaurants, open to non-members . All this aristocratic pleasure might sound an unlikely environment for the early years of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, but his family house can now be visited.