Ciudad Vieja: Calle Sarandi, Plaza Matriz, the Cathedral and Palacio Taranco

Jutting westward between the natural harbour of the Port of Montevideo and the open Rio de la Plata, the peninsula of Ciudad Vieja ("Old City") forms the historic birthplace of the Uruguayan capital. Laid out as a fortified Spanish garrison in 1724 and enclosed by thick stone ramparts until their demolition began in 1829, its compact thirty-block checkerboard preserves colonial government halls, nineteenth-century Italianate banks, Art Nouveau townhouses, and wrought-iron balconies. Pair your walk here with adjacent Plaza Independencia and lunch at Mercado del Puerto.

Pedestrianised Calle Sarandi and Museo Torres Garcia

Entering Ciudad Vieja beneath the 1741 stone arch of the Puerta de la Ciudadela (the sole surviving gate of the Spanish citadel wall), you step directly onto pedestrianised Calle Sarandi. Converted into a car-free promenade in 1992 and extended in 2005, the street is lined with outdoor bookstalls, cafés, and galleries. Halfway down the first block at Sarandi 683 stands the five-storey Art Deco building housing the Museo Torres Garcia, dedicated to Montevideo-born modernist master Joaquin Torres-Garcia (1874 to 1949), founder of Universal Constructivism and creator of the iconic 1943 drawing America Invertida (showing South America oriented with the south pole at the top).

Plaza Matriz (Plaza Constitucion) and the 1804 Cathedral

Shaded by plane trees and tipas around an 1871 white Italian marble fountain carved by sculptor Juan Ferrari, the oldest public square in Montevideo hosts a lively antique, coin, and silver mate-straw market on Saturdays. Occupying the western flank of the square over the site of a 1740 brick parish church, the neoclassical Catedral Metropolitana de Montevideo was begun in 1790 and consecrated in 1804. Its twin bell towers and glazed ceramic dome rise over an interior where side chapels hold an image of the Virgen de los Treinta y Tres (patroness of Uruguay) and the tombs of national figures including Fructuoso Rivera and Juan Antonio Lavalleja.

The 1812 Colonial Cabildo of Montevideo

Directly opposite on the eastern side of Plaza Matriz stands the severe Spanish neoclassical Cabildo y Reales Carceles, constructed between 1804 and 1812 by royal architect Tomas Toribio. Inside its upper assembly hall, delegates swore allegiance to Uruguay's first Constitution on 18 July 1830; today the building houses the Municipal Historical Museum and Archive.

Plaza Zabala and Belle Epoque Palacio Taranco

Four blocks west down Calle Rincon, diagonal Plaza Zabala (designed in the 1890s by French landscape architect Edouard Andre around an equestrian statue of city founder Bruno Mauricio de Zabala) is overlooked by the Palacio Taranco. Built between 1907 and 1910 for the Taranco brothers by French architects Charles Louis Girault (architect of the Petit Palais in Paris) and Jules Leon Chifflot, this Belle Epoque mansion now serves as the Museo de Artes Decorativas, preserving its original Louis XV and Louis XVI salons, Carrara marble staircases, and basement archaeological collection.