Historic Quarter of the City of Colonia del Sacramento
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How it came to be
On 8 October 1678 Prince Regent Pedro of Portugal commissioned Manuel Lobo to settle the Río de la Plata. Lobo sailed with five ships and about 400 soldiers and craftsmen, reached San Gabriel Island on 20 January 1680 and began building a post on 28 January. Spanish Buenos Aires attacked and took it before the year was out, and Lobo died a prisoner in 1683.
A provisional treaty signed in Lisbon in 1681 returned the town to Portugal, but it began to grow only in the 1690s. Besieged and taken by the Spanish in 1704–05 during the War of the Spanish Succession, it was razed, then handed back under the peace signed at Utrecht, and by 1718 it had more than a thousand inhabitants. Under Antonio Pedro de Vasconcellos, governor from 1722, it became the richest and best-defended town on the Río de la Plata and withstood another siege in 1735–37.
Spain took the town in 1762 and returned it the next year, then took it again in 1777, and the Treaty of San Ildefonso made it Spanish. After the wars of independence it became part of Uruguay in 1828, and the last of its defences were demolished in 1859. Its blend of Portuguese, Spanish and post-colonial styles was inscribed in 1995.
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