Casa Natal de Sarmiento (Sarmiento's Birthplace)

About this place

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, the educator and writer who became president of Argentina, was born in this house in 1811. It was the first building declared a National Historic Monument in the country, by a law of 7 September 1910, and opened as a museum in April 1911. His mother, Paula Albarracín, built the house from 1801, setting up her loom under a fig tree in the courtyard and paying the builders each week from the sale of her weaving. Its walls are rammed earth and adobe, its roofs cane laid over poplar beams. When a powerful earthquake struck San Juan in 1944, the original walls of the south side held, and the north wing was rebuilt to a drawing Sarmiento himself had left. The rooms tell the story of the house and of Sarmiento's life and work. Entry is free; it opens daily except Wednesday, with guided tours at set times.