Digital magazine
Paraguay Stories
Culture, places, people, events and everyday life seen through the eyes of an Italian woman who chose to live in the country.
A magazine in three languages, for anyone who wants to understand the country before describing it.
Areguá and Lake Ypacaraí, clay and water
Areguá is the easiest way out of the capital to see another Paraguay: ceramic workshops, colonial houses and the shore of a fragile lake.
Asunción on foot, from the port to the new city
The historic centre, the riverside promenade and the new districts tell three different chapters of the same city. All of them can be walked, with a little method.
Chipa, the bread sold through the car window
There are dozens of kinds of chipa, and each belongs to a precise moment of the day or the year. It is the country’s most widespread food and its most misunderstood.
Guaraní, an Indigenous language everybody speaks
Understanding the role of Guaraní means understanding how trust is built in Paraguay: where Spanish ends and belonging begins.
Ñandutí, the spider web you can wear
Born where European needle lace met the Guaraní imagination, ñandutí is still craft work measured in weeks rather than hours.
San Juan Ára, the festival where Paraguay plays with fire
St John’s festival in Paraguay is not a procession: it is a set of collective challenges, street food and fire, organised by neighbourhood communities.
Tereré, the daily rhythm of Paraguay
It is not simply yerba mate with cold water: tereré is how Paraguay makes time, welcomes people and builds trust.
The Chaco, an emptiness that is not empty
Dry forest, salt flats, roads that run straight for hundreds of kilometres, Mennonite colonies and Indigenous communities: the Chaco is the Paraguay no postcard shows.
The Guaraní Jesuit missions, a chapter Paraguay never stopped reading
Trinidad and Jesús de Tavarangue are the most complete surviving evidence of a social, architectural and linguistic experiment that lasted a century and a half.
The lapacho, Asunción’s calendar in flower
The lapacho flowers before it puts out leaves, which is why the bloom is so striking. It is how Paraguay marks the shift from winter to spring.
The Paraguay river, the motorway of a landlocked country
Paraguay has no sea access and entrusts most of its foreign trade to its river. Understanding the river means understanding the country’s calendar.
The Paraguayan harp, the instrument that learned to speak Guaraní
Thirty-six strings, a cedar frame and a technique built to make two languages sing. The harp is the sound Paraguay introduces itself with.