Ushuaia exists because Argentina needed somewhere to put its worst prisoners. Walk the cell blocks of the 1902 penal colony, trace the Yámana shell middens that predate it by 6,000 years, and read the missionary letters that started it all.
The 1903 former Banco Nación building holds Yámana harpoons, stuffed Fuegian birds and the figurehead of the Duchess of Albany, wrecked in 1893. Open Tue–Sun 10:00–19:00; the ticket also covers the Casa de Gobierno annexe two blocks away.
A small private museum on Rivadavia dedicated to the canoe people who occupied the Beagle Channel for 6,000 years. Dioramas reconstruct the akar shelters, bark canoes and the body paint of the chiexaus initiation. Open daily 10:00–20:00.
Circular grass-covered mounds along the shore are shell middens — layered limpet and mussel debris marking Yámana camps used for millennia. Interpretive panels stand on the Senda Costera trailhead inside Tierra del Fuego National Park.
A hut on a wooden pier where postmaster Carlos Luis Ferreyra has hand-stamped mail since 1994, continuing a postal tradition that carried missionary correspondence out of the channel. Passports stamped for a small fee.
The 1902–1947 penal colony, five radiating cell wings holding 380 prisoners including anarchist Simón Radowitzky and author Ricardo Rojas. One pavilion is left unrestored and unheated exactly as inmates knew it. Open daily 10:00–20:00.
The steam railway rebuilt on the 1909 prisoners' line, which convicts laid to haul timber from the forests west of town. The original wagons were pushed by hand-chained work gangs in all weather.
A 1913 pink-and-green Norwegian kit house shipped in pieces from Sweden for the Beban family, hauled to Maipú avenue and now the city's historic house museum. Interior boards, stove and staircase are original. Open Tue–Sun 11:00–19:00.
A black granite wall on the waterfront listing every Tierra del Fuego serviceman killed in the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas conflict, the province from which the invasion fleet sailed. An eternal flame burns at the base.
The 1893 Salesian mission church and school at Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria, where Selk'nam families were gathered as sheep ranchers cleared the steppe. The chapel, dormitory and cemetery survive. Open Tue–Sun 10:00–12:30 and 15:00–19:00.
The 1893 wooden territorial governor's residence where Governor Félix Paz administered a colony of a few hundred settlers. Corrugated iron cladding and a Victorian veranda mark the earliest civic architecture still standing on Maipú.
Founded 1886 by missionary Thomas Bridges, author of the Yámana–English dictionary, and the first estancia in Tierra del Fuego. The family still runs it; the tour covers the shearing shed, sawmill and the Acatushún marine mammal bone collection.
Croatian, Italian and Spanish surnames on graves of the settlers, prison guards and shipwreck victims who built the town, alongside a plot for prisoners who died in the presidio and were buried without names.