Uruguay Travel Guide

Plaza Independencia is Montevideo's civic heart and historic axis, laid out in 1837 by Italian architect Carlo Zucchi in the plan for the Ciudad Nueva, reportedly inspired by Paris's Rue de Rivoli. It sits exactly on the seam between the Ciudad Vieja and Centro, its pavement marked with the 'one-peso coin' of the city's Km 0. At the centre rises the 1923 Artigas monument: a 17-metre bronze equestrian statue on a granite base flanked by allegories of Law, Liberty, Work and Culture. Directly below, the founding father's mausoleum opened on 19 June 1977 - Artigas's birthday and a national holiday - free to enter down twin granite staircases to the chamber holding Artigas, his mother and his sister, watched by an honour guard from the Cuerpo de Blandengues, his first regiment; the changing of the guard is an attraction in itself. In the early 1900s French landscape architect Carlos Thays laid out four French parterres and rows of palms standing for the Thirty-Three Orientals of 1825. Each side of the square carries a chapter of national history: west, the last citadel gateway and the start of Peatonal Sarandi; east, the 1928 Palacio Salvo, briefly South America's tallest building, and the head of Avenida 18 de Julio; south, the Executive Tower and Estevez Palace; and on the southwest corner the 1856 Solis Theatre. Since 2010 the presidential sash has been handed over here.

Colonia del Sacramento sits on the northern shore of the Rio de la Plata estuary facing Buenos Aires, founded by the Portuguese in 1680 as Uruguay's oldest city and South America's classic one-day heritage town. The Barrio Historico, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1995, spreads about ten hectares of cobbled lanes, pastel corrugated rooftops, ivy-draped ruins and colonial stone walls - its layered Portuguese-Spanish fabric the legacy of two centuries of contest. The best-known lane is the 50-metre Calle de los Suspiros, low whitewashed houses under two-sloped roofs that preserve an almost untouched early-18th-century Portuguese face, Uruguay's most photographed street; the 1745 Porton de Campo gate marks the entrance, and eight small museums ring the Plaza Mayor, covered by one pass. The harbour lighthouse of 1857 rises from the ruins of the 17th-century San Francisco convent, a 35-metre tower climbed by about 110 spiral steps for views over terracotta roofs and the silver estuary, with Argentina visible on clear days. Ferries from Buenos Aires take about an hour, and the whole old town is walkable.

Ciudad Vieja is the historic core of Montevideo and one of South America's best-preserved colonial districts. In January 1724 the Spanish governor Bruno Mauricio de Zabala expelled the Portuguese garrison and began settlement, with 24 December 1726 taken as the official founding date; inside the walls of the old Ciudadela fortress, with Plaza Independencia as its landward gate, the old town grew layer by layer over two centuries. Cobbled lanes are lined with neoclassical, art-deco and colonial buildings - the 1928 Palacio Salvo, briefly South America's tallest building, the 1856 Teatro Solis, the Metropolitan Cathedral begun in 1804, the 1812 Cabildo and the 1745 citadel gate - while the harbour-side Mercado del Puerto, a century-old iron arcade, remains the veteran address for asado. Sarandi's pedestrian street, extended in 2005, strings together independent bookshops, antique dealers, cafes and street tango, with craft markets at weekends. Fifteen minutes on foot from the citadel gate to Plaza Matriz is the classic first hour of any visit.

The Museo Torres Garcia at Peatonal Sarandi 683 in Montevideo's old city, just inside the Ciudadela gate, is the first stop for understanding Uruguayan modern art. It is dedicated to Joaquin Torres-Garcia (1874-1949), the artist who moved between Barcelona, Paris and Montevideo and founded Universal Constructivism, fusing European constructivism with pre-Columbian Latin American symbols - his best-known image being a map of South America turned upside down. Founded by his widow Manolita Pina and family, the museum opened on 28 July 1955, his birthday, and since 1990 has occupied a five-storey art-deco building, the former Broqua & Scholberg bazaar. Over 150 oils, drawings, carved wooden toys, manuscripts and thousands of archival documents are laid out by period across the floors, from Barcelona modernisme through Parisian abstraction to his late Montevideo return; a ground-floor library and a basement theatre space host events. Do not miss the rooftop terrace, a quiet corner above the abstract art with views over the red rooftops.

Casapueblo ('mud-brick village') is the whitewashed complex Uruguayan artist Carlos Paez Vilaro (1923-2014) built by hand on the sea cliffs of Punta Ballena, about 13 km from Punta del Este and reached by the coastal road or bus. In 1958 he bought this exposed seafront plot and started from a wooden box studio called La Pionera, made of planks found on the shore; over the next 36 years, without plans and without straight lines, rooms crept down the cliff like vines until the white citadel reached thirteen storeys. He called it a habitable sculpture - inspired by the mud nests of the hornero, a Uruguayan bird, though outsiders liken it to the cave houses of Santorini. It now holds a museum, gallery, cafe and hotel, with four exhibition rooms under the main dome showing decades of work by this abstract painter, sculptor, potter and muralist. The most moving signature is the daily Sun Ceremony: minutes before sunset the artist's own recorded poem to the sun plays on the terrace, peaking on guitar exactly as the sun drops into the Atlantic - held every day since 1994.

Montevideo's La Rambla stretches about 22 km along the Rio de la Plata, from the old port east through Pocitos, Punta Carretas and Ramirez to Carrasco beach - one of the world's longest urban waterfront promenades and the true backbone of Uruguayan life. Joggers and cyclists take the morning breeze; by dusk the lawns and seawall belong to anglers, dog-walking families and locals with their mate gourds. Tired legs can stop at a waterfront bar for a medio y medio - dry white topped with sparkling - and watch the sun sink into the muddy, gentle river. The water is too silty for swimming, but the avenue is a stage for walking, cycling, skating and picnics, and some sections close to cars on Sundays, the moment the city's cyclists wait for all week.