Paraguay has Asunción as its capital, one of South America’s oldest continuously inhabited cities. Spanish explorer Juan de Salazar y Espinosa founded Asunción on 15 August 1537, and its feast-day foundation gave the city the name Nuestra Señora Santa María de la Asunción.
The settlement stood on the Paraguay River and became an important base for Spanish expansion in the Río de la Plata region. For a period, Asunción was called the “Mother of Cities” because expeditions from it helped establish or support other colonial settlements in the region.
Asunción remains Paraguay’s political, cultural, and economic center. It lies on the eastern bank of the Paraguay River, opposite Argentina’s Formosa Province. The city is distinct from Ciudad del Este, Paraguay’s major commercial city near the Brazilian border, and from Montevideo, the capital of neighboring Uruguay.