Colonia del Sacramento is the jewel in the crown of Uruguay's tourist attractions, and is a World Heritage Site. It is situated in south west Uruguay on the River Plate.
The original settlement was founded by Manuel de Lobo, a Portuguese, in 1680 to enable them to smuggle goods across the Rio de la Plata into Buenos Aires. The Spanish took the town in 1762 and it remained in their hands until 1777 when tax reforms made smuggling redundant.
Today the main port is a busy terminal for the Buquebus ferry service to and from Argentina. Colonia is a popular weekend destination for Argentineans. The old port is now a favoured stopping off point for weekend sailing jaunts & races from Buenos Aires and for cruisers (the yachting variety) like us. It is ideally situated in the old part of Colonia and once off the boat you are right in the historic part of the town.
The old town is beautiful, we visited it on a weekday in winter & it was very quiet which gave it a slightly dead feel. I'm sure that it feels livlier when the summer crowds throng the streets.
The prettiest part of the old town is around the 'Plaza Mayor 25 de Mayo'. Many of the streets in Uruguay are named after significant dates '18 de Julio' is another popular choice, almost every town seems to have one of these. If it's not a date it is usually a General or a South American country.
The architecture is, unsurprisingly, typically Portuguese/Spanish. A lot of it is single storey with flat or shallow pitched terra cotta tiled roofs, with only the grander residences and some later commercial buildings such as warehouses, rising to a second floor. There are two obvious exceptions to this, the lighthouse and the windmill. The streets are all cobbled; some have a central gutter, and some have the high point in the centre of the street with a gutter on either side. I understand that one is Portuguese & one Spanish but I cannot remember which is which.
The Plaza Mayor 25 de Mayo is rectangular and generously proportioned, lined on either side with citrus trees, the central grassed area has a collection of large trees providing shade and a few tall palm trees full of noisy Parakeets. Fronting onto the square are various official buildings such as Admiral Brown's house (whoever he was); a beautifully proportioned double storey house painted white with green shutters and door; the Armada (navy) offices and a few merchants’ houses. The lighthouse stands in the southwest corner adjacent to the ruins of a monastery. At the opposite end are the remains of the original wall of the fortified settlement with a drawbridge. A huge Uruguayan flag flies in the square; the Uruguayans are proud of their flag and take every opportunity to show it off.
There are old Bougainvilleas growing throughout the old town and they add a colourful dimension to the streets and squares. Many of the wider streets are lined with trees, often Plane trees to my surprise; I always associate them with London. To add to the vintage feel of the town there are numerous old cars parked in strategic spots around the old town, we saw a Model T Ford and an ancient Citroen to name two. It is commonplace to see very old cars on the road in Uruguay as new cars are very expensive so models of thirty years old and more are unexceptional.
There are still quite a lot of old buildings that are as yet unrestored, I imagine that this is due to economic reasons as the old warehouses adjacent to the port are large and quite dilapidated and would require significant investment to bring them back into use, some of them would make amazing boutique hotels or apartments. The fact that these buildings are not in use does not really detract from the atmosphere of the old town.
The town has lots of coffee shops and restaurants, most of them a cut above the standard we have found in other parts of Uruguay. One in particular had beautiful magazines and shelves of art books plus a bookcase with most of the quality bestsellers from the last ten years or so, all in English. They were there to read in the coffee shop, not to purchase. I wish that we had stayed long enough to have read some of them. All this and great coffee, free wi-fi , an open fire and a great view too.
The greater part of Colonia is a fairly ordinary Uruguayan town, wide streets and a large attractive central square. Most buildings look a bit run down but must have been quite smart in their time; a lot of the architecture is of the Art Deco period. It is a strange contrast to the elegant historic town.
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