Punta del Este

Punta del Este fills for a few weeks around New Year, mostly with Argentines, and empties again by March. The addresses that last here were mostly made by one person with a fixed idea: a painter who built a hotel by hand for thirty-six years without drawings, a chef who took over the general store of a village inland, and a Chilean sculptor who was given the beach because the squares had already gone.

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Institutions

Casapueblo (Punta Ballena) — Carlos Páez Vilaró began building it on the cliff in 1958, with no plans, taking the shape from the mud nest of the hornero bird, and kept going for thirty-six years. It is now a hotel and a museum of his work; he lived and worked here until his death in 2014. Every evening since 1994 a recording of his voice reads a poem to the sunset from the terraces.