Discover Carmelo, Uruguay

The earliest signs of European presence in the area date back to 1527, when the Fort of San Lázaro was built under the command of Sebastián Caboto, soon abandoned. In 1611 and 1617, Hernandarias introduced cattle into the Banda Oriental; the second herd entered through the Arroyo de las Vacas, giving its name to the waterway that today defines the geography of Carmelo. In the mid-eighteenth century, the Jesuits established the Estancia de Belén nearby, now known as Calera de las Huérfanas, one of the region's earliest agricultural and industrial ventures, where they also planted the first 1,500 grapevines in Uruguayan soil.

Around 1758, a small settlement called "Las Víboras" existed in the area, little more than a chapel and a few dwellings. Finding the location inhospitable, its inhabitants requested to relocate. It was José Gervasio Artigas who, from Purificación (his headquarters in the north of the country), ordered the move and founded the city on February 12, 1816, on the banks of the Arroyo de las Vacas. Carmelo is the only city personally founded by Uruguay's national hero that still stands today. Its name has no documented origin, though it is linked to devotion to the Virgin of Carmen. In 1920, Law No. 7,257 officially granted it the status of city.

Over time, Carmelo grew into a center for stone and lime quarrying and shipbuilding at its local yards. On May 1, 1912, the swing bridge over the Arroyo de las Vacas was inaugurated, built in Germany by the United Factories of Augsburg and Nuremberg, the first of its kind in South America and the only one in Uruguay operated by human power. Local legend holds that whoever crosses it always returns.

Today, Carmelo is an established wine region and a growing tourist destination. Its wineries, heirs to those first Jesuit vines, export wines to Europe, the United States, and Asia. The swing bridge, the Calera de las Huérfanas, the port, and an architecture that preserves the memory of the nineteenth century together shape a setting where culture, landscape, and wine tourism meet naturally.