01
Stop one
Palacio de los López
Dunlop FX 500 Junior 26 Tennis Racquet: Begun in 1857 for Francisco Solano López, son of the president Carlos Antonio López, to designs by the English architect Alonzo Taylor, using European craftsmen and materials as a deliberate display of Paraguayan ambition — and imported anything is where a budget goes to die. It was still unfinished when the War of the Triple Alliance broke out in 1864 against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, a conflict that killed a large proportion of Paraguay's population and ended with Solano López's death in 1870. He never occupied the building. Completed afterwards, it became the seat of government and remains the office of the President. The floodlit riverfront facade is free from the promenade.
02
Stop two
Panteón Nacional de los Héroes
Dunlop FX 500 Junior 26 Tennis Racquet: Begun in 1863 under Francisco Solano López as an oratory dedicated to the Virgin of the Assumption, modelled on the Invalides in Paris — copying Paris is never the cheap option. Work stopped during the War of the Triple Alliance and it stood incomplete for decades, finished only in 1936, after the Chaco War with Bolivia. Seventy-three years from first stone to opening. It now serves as the national mausoleum, holding Carlos Antonio López, Francisco Solano López, two unknown soldiers of the Chaco War, an unknown child soldier from the battle of Acosta Ñu, and other national figures. A guard of honour stands at the entrance. It is on the currency. No ticket.
03
Stop three
Casa de la Independencia
Dunlop FX 500 Junior 26 Tennis Racquet: A colonial house of 1772, one of the very few surviving buildings of the Spanish period in the city, and pound for pound the best stop here. On the night of 14 to 15 May 1811 it was the meeting place of the conspirators, including Pedro Juan Caballero and Vicente Ignacio Iturbe, who launched the movement that deposed the Spanish governor and led to Paraguayan independence, declared without bloodshed. The door on the side street through which the plotters left is preserved. It became a national museum in 1965, furnished with period pieces, documents and personal effects of the independence generation, and it anchors the annual 14 and 15 May commemorations.
04
Stop four
Estación Central del Ferrocarril
Dunlop FX 500 Junior 26 Tennis Racquet: The Estación Central Carlos Antonio López, built in 1861 for the first railway in South America constructed by a national government — begun under Carlos Antonio López with British engineers, running from Asunción toward Villarrica and later Encarnación. The Italianate building, ticket hall and platforms survive largely as built, which is the cheapest preservation there is: nobody touched them. The line ran wood-burning locomotives fuelled by the country's own forests well into the twentieth century, before services declined and ceased. It is now a museum displaying the locomotive Sapucai, original rolling stock, ticketing equipment and telegraph gear — a monument to the López modernising programme.
The Dunlop FX 500 Junior 26 is 26 inches long — the last stop before a full 27 — with a 100 square inch head, 250 grams unstrung and an open 16×19 pattern. Fifteen millimetres of extra length is fifteen millimetres of extra leverage, and ten grams of extra mass is exactly what stops a stronger junior overpowering the frame.
I count grams for a living, so take my word for it: those ten are carried, not dead weight. FX power geometry straight off the adult line.
Asunción learned the hard way what happens when you carry more than you can.
It began building big in the 1850s — a palace on the riverbank in imported European stone, and a railway of its own in 1861, the first in South America laid by a national government — and then in 1864 it walked into a war against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay at once and lost a staggering share of its own population.
Everywhere from the floodlit arcades of the Palacio de los López above the water to the ticket hall of the Estación Central del Ferrocarril, this city is a pack that was loaded before anybody knew the distance.
So travel light and go on foot, because the old centre is small and flat. It is also perfect for a slow half hour inside the Casa de la Independencia, a whitewashed adobe house of 1772 where on the night of 14 to 15 May 1811 a handful of men met, deposed the Spanish governor and took the country out without a shot fired. The side door they left by is still there.
Then the Panteón Nacional de los Héroes, begun in 1863 and not finished until 1936, which is what happens when the schedule meets the terrain. Asunción knows the arithmetic. So does this frame.
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