Exploring Montevideo

After breakfast, we walked to Plaza Independencia, the starting point for the hop-on, hop-off bus we had booked. The plaza is a popular manicured square with, at its centre, a stately statue of General José Gervasio Artigas, father of Uruguay.

On the way, we walked past Teatro Solis, Uruguay's most important and renowned theatre. It opened in 1856. The building was designed by the Italian architect Carlo Zucchi and named after the explorer Juan Díaz de Solís, the first European explorer to land in modern-day Uruguay. In 1998, the government of Montevideo started a major reconstruction of the theatre, which included two columns designed by Philippe Starck. The reconstruction was completed in 2004 with the re-opening taking place in August of that year.En savoir plus