Travel Guide Piribebuy

Piribebuy is situated in a valley where many rivers confluence, with clear and fresh waters. Its name comes from pirĩ vevúĩ, "sweet shiver" in Guarani. The town retains a marked colonial style, with beautiful houses around the two main squares and the church called Santuario Nacional Dulce Nombre de Jesús, or Ñandejára Guazú ("Our Great Lord"), dating from 1753. Inside, there is an original hand-carved altarpiece with an articulated crucifix in its centre, which is said to be of great value. Piribebuy is known to have been the third provisional capital of the Republic, in December 1868, during the War of the Triple Alliance. The city suffered enormously during the conflict, with a surprise attack by Brazilian troops on August 12, 1869. Only 1,600 civilians, many of them women, remained to defend the city against more than 20,000 heavily armed Brazilians. It was one of the worst massacres of the war (along with the Acosta Ñu massacre four days later, in which more than 3,000 child combatants died). The military did not hesitate to close the doors of the hospital and then set fire to it with 600 people inside. Piribebuy is nicknamed "La Ciudad Heroica" for the courage of its women who fought tirelessly during this atrocious battle. Today, Piribebuy's bucolic and hilly landscapes attract the capital's inhabitants on weekends. The town is known for its "caña paraguaya" (rum) factory of the Fortin company, which is beginning to make a name for itself on the international market, but also for the production of the "para'i de sesenta listas" poncho: a poncho made of very fine cotton, with silky shards and sixty white stripes. A meticulous ancestral work, which takes several weeks and can be seen in the house of the famous craftswoman Doña Rosa Segovia. The "Festival Internacional del Poncho Para'i de 60 Listas" is organized around January 21, during one week, at the same time as the festivities of Ñandejára Guazú. It brings together many artists and handicraft exhibitions