Lezama Park

Historians believe the park's eastern barranca to have been the site of Spanish Conquistador Pedro de Mendoza's landing on what became the first, failed attempt to establish Buenos Aires in 1536.

The lot was later purchased by a succession of English Argentines, the last of whom, Charles Ridgley Horne, improved and expanded the property, raising a baroque mansion on the land's western edge, Defensa Street.

Allied to the repressive paramount Governor of Buenos Aires, Juan Manuel de Rosas, Ridgley Horne was forced into exile after the strongman's 1852 overthrow, however, and the land was sold to José Gregorio Lezama, who added adjoining lots to the north and gave the green space its current dimensions.

Lezama commissioned Belgian landscape designer Charles Veerecke to beautify the grounds, planting rows of tipa and jacaranda trees decades before the three species became nearly emblematic of the city at large.

The park's surroundings were enhanced by the 1901 inaugural of the Russian Orthodox Church of Buenos Aires and by the addition of a number of buildings in the Second Empire style, notably the one housing the Bar Británico, an English-style Pub still popular among locals.