Casapueblo, Uruguay: what it is, hours and how to get there
Andante notes · 5 min read
Thirteen white floors hanging off a cliff, without a single straight line and without a single drawing. Carlos Páez Vilaró started it in 1958 around a shack made of driftwood planks and kept adding to it for thirty-six years, until the house became what he called a habitable sculpture.
- What it is
- Museum, studio, gallery, café and hotel in one building
- Who made it
- Carlos Páez Vilaró, Uruguayan artist
- When
- Begun in 1958; 36 years of building, 13 floors
- Where
- Punta Ballena, 13 km (8 miles) from Punta del Este
- Museum hours
- Every day, 10 am to 6 pm
- The sun ceremony
- Every evening, minutes before the sun goes down
What is Casapueblo?
It began as something far smaller: a wooden shack built from planks Páez Vilaró found along the shore, which he named La Pionera and used as his first studio. The rest grew around that shack year by year, with no design and no straight lines, until it reached thirteen floors of terraces stepping down towards the water.
36
Years of building
From 1958 to the artist's death.
0
Drawings
They were made afterwards, backwards.
It gets compared to the white villages of Santorini constantly, and the comparison falls apart the moment you ask the man who built it: he talked about the hornero, the bird that kneads its nest out of mud and closes it in circles. That is the difference between copying a Greek postcard and building the way a local creature builds.
Inside, things live together that anywhere else would be kept apart: the museum and the artist's studio under the main dome, four exhibition rooms, a terrace, a café and a hotel. It is not a museum with a hotel next door; it is a house that kept growing until it held both.
I built it as if it were a habitable sculpture, without plans, mostly at the urging of my own enthusiasm.
What happens at sunset
Since 1994, every evening, minutes before the sun touches the water, a recording plays out over the terraces: the voice of Páez Vilaró reading a poem to see the sun off. The artist died in 2014 and the ceremony carried on, in his voice, every day since.
Which is why no fixed hour works all year round: look up what time the sun sets on the day you are going, and be up there before it. In summer that can be close to eight in the evening; in winter, far earlier.
A memorial that explains half the house
Inside Casapueblo there is a memorial to Carlos Miguel, the artist's son and one of the sixteen survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, the plane that crashed in the Andes on 13 October 1972. It is the Uruguayan story the world knows from the films, told here from the side of the family that waited below.
How to get to Casapueblo from Punta del Este
Casapueblo stands at Punta Ballena, about 13 kilometres (8 miles) from Punta del Este along the Ruta Panorámica, which since 2017 carries Carlos Páez Vilaró's name. You get there by car, by taxi, or on one of the excursions that leave from the centre; not on foot, and that is the point worth being clear about before planning the day around it.
Thirteen kilometres from here, out on the peninsula, is where Andante's narrated walk begins.
Hours and tickets
The museum opens every day from 10 am to 6 pm. Admission is paid and the price moves with the season, so the figure is worth checking on the museum's own site on the day rather than trusting a number written months ago on any page, this one included.
Questions that keep coming up
What are Casapueblo's hours?
The museum opens every day from 10 am to 6 pm. The sun ceremony is separate: it starts minutes before the sun goes down, so the hour moves with the time of year.
How do you get to Casapueblo from Punta del Este?
It is at Punta Ballena, about 13 km (8 miles) from Punta del Este along the Ruta Panorámica, the road that now carries Carlos Páez Vilaró's name. By car, by taxi, or on an excursion from the centre; walking is not an option.
Who built Casapueblo, and when?
The Uruguayan artist Carlos Páez Vilaró. He started in 1958 around a wooden shack made of planks from the shore and kept extending it for 36 years, without plans.
Is Casapueblo a museum or a hotel?
Both, and more: the museum and the artist's studio are under the main dome, and the complex also holds a gallery, a café and a hotel.
How long does the visit take?
An hour covers the museum and the terraces. If the plan includes the sun ceremony, add the wait until sunset, and go up early: the place fills.
Can you stay the night at Casapueblo?
Yes, the complex has a hotel and apartments, with high season from December to February. It is the only way to see the place empty: at ten in the morning, before it opens to the public.
Is it worth going in winter?
The sun sets earlier and the queue is shorter, so the ceremony is easier to watch. What changes is the wind on the cliff, which in July is not a detail.
The same afternoon, on the other side
Casapueblo takes an afternoon and sits thirteen kilometres from the peninsula. Out there, on the Punta itself, is where «La otra Punta del Este» begins: a narrated walk that sets off from La Mano, crosses from the rough shore to the calm one and ends beside the water, told by Graciela, who was born here when this was a fishing village. Two ways of understanding the same place: one an artist built, the other you walk.
One hour · 3.8 km · no app, opens in the browser · no group and no schedule · $U 199 ≈ US$ 5