Beach Guide

Villa Gesell is a coastal resort on the Atlantic coast between Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata in Argentina. Declared a city in 1970, Villa Gesell features 10 kilometers of beautiful beaches with gentle slopes and mild climate. The city was named by Don Carlos Gesell in honor of his father Silvio Gesell, a German economist. Carlos Gesell transformed the 1,648 hectares of barren dune landscape he bought in 1931 by planting thousands of trees.

Today, Villa Gesell offers lush wooded areas featuring an abundance of tamarinds, pine trees, acacia trees and eucalyptus. The sand dunes that remain on Villa Gesell can be navigated using four-wheeled motorcycles. Other activities popular with tourists include beach volleyball, swimming, and water sports such as jet skiing, windsurfing and boat fishing. The beautiful waters of Villa Gesell offer brotolas and corvinas for the serious sport fishing enthusiasts. Infrastructures that support the tourism industry also abound in the city.

Tourists can find all types of accommodations, restaurants, night clubs, an amphitheater, a museum, forest reserves and cultural parks. Playa, the first hotel built when the tourists begun arriving at Villa Gesell, is still in use today. Del Pinar Amphitheater is Villa Gesell’s center of cultural activities, hosting the annual Summer Choral’s Encounter and Argentine Days of Independent Cinema and Video. The Forest Reserve and Pinar del Norte’s Cultural Park features the result of the forestation initiative that was started many years ago.

Other points of interest include the Museum and Historical Archives, the Cultural Center and Querandi Lighthouse Natural Reserve. The Museum and Historical Archives, opened in 1991, was the ancestral home built by Carlos Gesell for his family when he settled in the area. The Cultural Center, the chalet or second house of Don Carlos, was opened in 1995 as an annex to the museum. Visitors can also take quad rides to the Querandi lighthouse, which opened in 1922 and the first building to be constructed in Villa Gesell. The Quarandi Lighthouse Natural Reserve, opened in 1996, is one of the largest sand dune reserves in the world, featuring 5757 hectares.