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La Plata's official centre is Plaza Moreno , a vast open square covering four blocks toward the southern end of the city. The city's foundation stone was laid in the centre of the square in 1882, together with a time capsule containing documents and medals relating to the founding of the city. The capsule was exhumed on the city's centenary, and a new one was buried in its place. There are a handful of theories floating around which claim that La Plata was founded according to a secret Masonic scheme and that when the documents buried in the time capsule were exhumed they would provide evidence. Sadly, the papers were too damaged to bear out the theory. The contents of the exhumed time capsule, though, together with a replica of its replacement, can be viewed in the Museo y Archivo Dardo Rocha (Mon-Fri 9am-6pm; free; tel 0221/421-1689) on the western side of the square, at Calle 50 no. 933, housed in the residence once occupied by La Plata's founder. On the northern end of the square is the Germanic municipalidad , a broad white edifice dominated by a lofty central clock tower and elegant arched stained-glass windows. At the southern end is the vast and rather forbidding Cathedral . Designed by the French architect, Pedro Benoit, it's heavily neo-Gothic in style, with a pinkish stone facade and steep slate roofs. The foundation stone was laid in 1884 but the cathedral was not finally completed until 1932, with its two principal towers being finished as late as 1999. If the cathedral doesn't strike you as exactly beautiful from the outside, it is certainly tremendously imposing on the inside with its soaring, vertigo-inducing interior punctuated by austere ribbed columns. The museum in the crypt (Mon 9am-1pm, Tues-Sat 9am-6pm, Sun 9am-1pm & 3-7pm; $2, free on Tues) has more on the cathedral, including some excellent photographs documenting its construction.
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