Even though the city did not have a clear foundation date or any official acknowledgement thereof, most commentators state that Rosario was founded on 7 October 1793 with a local population of 457 inhabitants.

In 1724, another colonial settlement was initiated by Santiago de Montenegro, who set up a mill, drew plans for the future town, built a chapel, and was appointed mayor in 1751.

In 1841, a decree of the caudillo and Governor of Buenos Aires, Juan Manuel de Rosas, banned navigation of the Paraná and Paraguay rivers to non-Argentine vessels, and thus shut off the Port of Rosario to foreign trade.

Governor Domingo Crespo justified the request at the provincial legislative body, marking the geographically strategic position of the town for national and international trade, and on 5 August, Rosario was formally declared a city.

By 1887 it had about 50,000 inhabitants, of whom 40% were European immigrants, who brought new ideas from Europe and began to turn Rosario into a politically progressive city (contrasting with the more conservative, aristocratic Santa Fe).

Ovidio Lagos, founder of the oldest Argentine newspaper, La Capital, was one of the strongest proponents of this idea (one of the main avenues in Rosario now carries his name).

According to experts, this growth was propelled by the increased purchasing power of farmers around Rosario, helped by competitive exports, and the overall preference for safer investment options.

Rosario and its metropolitan area produce 20% of the cars, 4% of the domestic refrigerators, 80% of the machinery for the food industry and 100% of the auto bodies for long-distance buses made in Argentina.

Worldwide international companies settled in Rosario include, among others, General Motors, Cargill, Unilever, John Deere, Petrobrás, ICI, Dow, Tenneco and Mahle.

"[20] The Municipal Bank was founded in 1896 to support the financial needs of the citizens and small businesses in the highly productive region of southern Santa Fe Province, centered in Rosario.

The idea of creating a municipal financial institution was expressed in 1893 by Mayor Floduardo Grandoli, citing the proliferation of "centers of usury" that exploited those in need of credit, especially the poor (something not addressed by the profile of the Provincial Bank of Santa Fe, which granted loans only to demonstrably solvent persons).

A cultural complex known as Puerto de la Música,[22] designed by the modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer (of Brasília fame), is to be built along the banks of the Paraná River.

Among the people invited to give these talks were economists Domingo Cavallo and Alfonso Prat Gay, renowned scholars Beatriz Sarlo and Silvia Bleichmar, journalists Alejandro Rozitchner and Jorge Asís, filmmaker Fernando Solanas and former presidents of Chile (Ricardo Lagos), Argentina (Eduardo Duhalde), and Uruguay (Luis Alberto Lacalle Herrera).

It was commissioned in 1944 and inaugurated on June 20, 1957 – the anniversary of the death of Manuel Belgrano, creator of the Argentine flag, who raised it for the first time on an island in the river on February 27, 1812.

The structure was designed by the architects Ángel Guido and Alejandro Bustillo, and the monument was adorned with works by sculptors Lola Mora, Eduardo Barnes, Alfredo Bigatti, and José Fioravanti.

The planetarium has a core team, together with its secondary elements, providing an artificial image of the sky through projections made on a fixed hemispherical dome that functions as a display.

The Observatory facilitates outreach, teaching, and research in the field of astronomy and related sciences and informs the public of phenomena that occur in the sky, such as eclipses, planetary configurations, passages of comets, etc.

There are realized observations and astronomical photography of all the visible celestial objects in Rosario's sky, according to time of year and especially the Sun, the Moon, and the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and Venus.

As of the 2010 Census, there were 1,193,605 people residing in the city and 31 surrounding districts, making Greater Rosario the third-largest metro area in Argentina even as its population growth has leveled off.

[citation needed] The main contributors were Spain, Italy, France, Croatia, Poland, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, the Balkans (especially Greece, Serbia and Montenegro), Switzerland, Germany, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Scandinavia (especially Sweden).

To the north lie the districts of Alberdi, La Florida (with a popular beach resort of the same name), Parque Field (built under US President John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress development plans) and Rucci.

To the north-east there lie the neighborhoods of Pichincha (a red-light district in the early 20th century, now home to an open-air antiquities fair: Mercado de antigüedades "Feria Retro La Huella"), Ludueña, Lisandro de la Torre (home of the Rosario Central football club) and Empalme Graneros; these last three are in the influence area of the Ludueña Stream, now contained by underground piping, but until the 1980s a source of floods.

Their implementation attracted opposition from residents and shop owners but was well received by habitual bus users since they reduce the time needed to get out of the crowded central area by a noticeable amount.

When the entire Argentine railway network was nationalised during the presidency of Juan Perón, most of the stations (by then under the administration of State-owned company Ferrocarriles Argentinos) were closed for passenger services to reduce costs, leaving only a few active.

The main channel of the river directly in front of the port has an advantageous configuration that allows preservation of a depth of 10 metres (34 ft) with minor periodic dredging.

The port is the largest of a series located in the several cities of the Greater Rosario that lie on the Paraná; the last (northernmost) able of overseas traffic being Puerto General San Martín (23 km (14 mi).

It is part of the Bi-Oceanic Corridor, which joins the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean via Buenos Aires, Rosario, Córdoba, and the Cuyo region; going north–south it forms the axis of the Paraguay-Paraná waterway.

Cargo from other parts of Argentina is brought into the port by the railway lines of the Nuevo Central Argentino, communicating with Córdoba (west) and Zárate, Buenos Aires (south), as well as the multiple national and provincial roads and highways that converge in Rosario.

The local language evidences the typical linguistic features that characterize this dialect, notably the voseo (use of vos instead of tú as pronoun for the second person singular) and the sheísmo (form of yeísmo where ll- and y- are pronounced as a voiceless [ʃ]).

This demand, boosted by low prices and sale promotions, and coupled with restrictions on the installation of antennas and alleged lack of investment by the providers, sometimes degrades the quality of the service.