Punta del Este Travel Guide

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.