Saturday, March 6, 2021

Colonia del Sacramento - Uruguay

As I said in the previous post, I only have 4 postcards from Uruguay. Two are from Montevideo and the others are from Colonia del Sacramento, one of the two UNESCO sites in the country and which has the particularity of being a place of Portuguese origin.
These two postcards  arrived in 2009 and were both sent by Atali.

Colonia del Sacramento is one of the most important tourist references in Uruguay, receiving thousands of visitors throughout the year. Just an hour from Buenos Aires by boat and two hours from Montevideo by road, this is a place where the visitor meets the culture, history and magic of a wonderful destination on the Rio de la Plata. The city's charm is linked to the particularity of its history.

Founded in 1680 by the Portuguese Manoel Lobo, the city passed from the Portuguese domain to the Spanish domain several times.
Throughout the successive destructions and occupations of its territory, the Historic Quarter acquired the urban and architectural heterogeneity that characterizes it:  to the contributions of the Portuguese and Spanish, were added those of the artisans who emigrated there during the second half of the 19th century.
All of its modest buildings, in regard both to their dimensions and their appearance, are a particularly interesting testimony to the singular fusion of the Portuguese and Spanish traditions. in: https://whc.unesco.org

The building on the card is a museum, the Regional Historical Archive Museum, a portuguese house that dates back to 1750. The walls, beams and tiles are all original as are parts of the floor. The museum hold all the important documentation about the city and the region that has been brought back from Spain, Portugal, England, France and neigbouring countries. These includes old maps, police records (1876-1898) and water color paintings from 1840 to 1865.

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