2,780,400 sq km (1,073,518 sq miles).

44,022,394 (UN estimate 2016).

15.6 per sq km.

Buenos Aires.

Federal republic.

Argentina is the second largest area of land in South America, separated from Chile to the west by the long spine of the Andes. Its landscape is extremely varied, with the top sub-tropical and sun-baked, and its sub-Antarctic bottom tip glistening with icy waters and glaciers. It has 3,100 miles (4,989km) of coastline. Its eastern border is the Atlantic Ocean, with Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil to the north and northeast.

Argentina can roughly be divided into four main geographical areas: the spectacular Andes mountain range, the dry North along with the more verdant Mesopotamia, the lush plains of the Pampas and the windswept wastes of Patagonia. Mount Aconcagua soars almost 7,000m (23,000ft), and waterfalls at Iguazú stretch out in a massive semi-circle, thundering 70m (230ft) to the bed of the Paraná River.

Argentina’s lowest point is Laguna del Carbón in Santa Cruz Province, sitting 105m (344ft) below sea level. In the southwest is the Argentine Lake District with a string of beautiful glacial lakes framed by snow-covered mountains. At Argentina’s southernmost tip, and so the southernmost tip of the whole of South America, is Tierra del Fuego (Spanish for Land of Fire), a stunning archipelago split between Argentina and neighbouring Chile.

Argentina's population is more than 92% Roman Catholic, 2% Protestant with small Muslim and Jewish communities.

The most common form of greeting between friends is kissing cheeks. It is customary for Argentines to kiss cheeks on meeting and departing, regardless of gender. Dinner is usually eaten well into the evening - from around 2100 onwards. While Argentina is famous for its wonderful wine, Argentinians as a whole do not have the same propensity for drinking large amounts of alcohol as Europeans, and in bars and even nightclubs many will be drinking soft drinks and few will appear noticeably drunk.

Formal wear is worn for official functions and dinners, particularly in exclusive restaurants. A smoking ban was introduced across Argentina in 2011, it prohibits smoking in public areas, including museums, theatres, all forms of public transport, bars and restaurants.

Queuing and waiting for things in public places can seem a little less ordered than in Europe; an example is the Subte in Buenos Aires – people will continue to board the carriage until the platform is empty, whether there seems to be space in the carriage or not. It can make for a rather crowded and sweaty journey.

220 volts AC, 50Hz. Plug fittings in older buildings are of the two-pin round type, but most new buildings use the V-shaped twin with earth pin.

President Mauricio Macri since 2015.

President Mauricio Macri since 2015.

The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in present-day Argentina in the early 16th century. After becoming a viceroyalty of Spain in the 1770s, the territory achieved independence in 1816. Between the mid-19th century and 1946, Argentina swung from civilian to military rule, and from radical to conservative policies. A coup resulted in the rise of Lieutenant General Juan Domingo Perón as president in 1943.

After winning the election of 1946, Perón instigated a policy of extreme nationalism and social improvement. At his side throughout his rise to power was his second wife, former actress Eva Perón, until her death from cancer in 1952; she remains Argentina’s most iconic female figure.

President Perón was overthrown in 1955, but he was re-elected in 1973. On his death, a year later, Perón’s third wife Isabel took office, but she was deposed by a military coup in 1976.

The end of the Peronista period heralded perhaps the darkest period in Argentina’s history. Driven by an obsessive fear of communism, the new military regime instituted a reign of terror in which disappearances, torture and extra-judicial murder were commonplace. This brutal era still feels very recent in today’s Buenos Aires, and the mothers of those who disappeared during the Dirty War, can be seen silently marching around Plaza de Mayo every Thursday afternoon.

Argentina’s invasion of the Malvinas (Falkland Islands) in 1982, led to defeat at the hands of the British. While the topic is still a diplomatic sore point, relations between the two countries have somewhat improved.

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner succeeded her husband, Néstor Carlos Kirchner, in 2007, becoming Argentina's first elected female president. She came to power promising more of the same centre-left populist policies that had served her husband so well.

Kirchner’s initial popularity waned within a few years, however, with accusations of financial corruption, followed by violent suppression of protesters against her imposed export tax hikes, bringing back horrific memories of former strong-arm governments. In the 2015 elections she lost the presidency to Mauricio Macri of the centrist Cambiemos coalition. Macri reversed some of Kirchner’s populist policies, lifting restrictions on foreign currency purchases and reducing export taxes on various agricultural products. The OECD predicts that Argentina will be out of recession by 2018.

Did you know?
• In 2010 Argentina became the first country in South America to legalise same-sex marriage.
• Nobel Prize winning author Jorge Luis Borges famously compared the Falklands War to “two bald men fighting over a comb”.
• Lionel Messi and Ernesto Che Guevara were both born in the same Argentinian city, Rosario.