Tandil

Tandil in Buenos Aires Province rises unexpectedly from the flat pampas as a cluster of low granite hills — the Tandilia system, one of the oldest geological formations in Argentina at over 2.4 billion years — and the city built into these hills has a character distinct from any other Buenos Aires Province town, its food culture, its cheese production, and its weekend pace all operating on a different register from the surrounding flatland. The Cerro El Centinela overlooks the city from 488 metres, and the cable car to its summit is the most Argentine cable car experience available at this latitude.

Tandil is a city of 120,000 that has developed one of Argentina's most sophisticated regional food cultures, centred on the Chacinados y Salamines tradition of cured meats — salami, lomito ahumado, and jamón serrano — produced in the surrounding hills and sold in delis that have been operating in the same families since the mid-twentieth century. The surrounding hills contain significant rock-climbing terrain, including a 9-metre balanced rock (Piedra Movediza) that stood in the city plaza until it fell in 1912 — a replica now sits in its original location. The region's Easter Week celebrations draw pilgrims to the Sierra del Tandil, where a cross on the hill above the city is the terminus of a procession that has been held without interruption since 1943. Tandil's granite also provided the stone for the Buenos Aires obelisk and the Buenos Aires city paving blocks.