Uruguay – Montevideo

Montevideo is the largest city, the capital, and the chief port of Uruguay.

The city was founded by the Spanish in the early eighteenth century; its first European settlers were a boatload of young families from the Canary Islands. Freed slaves from Brazil and Argentina came to the city in the nineteenth century, attracted by rumors of fair treatment. In time, more immigrants would arrive from Italy, Spain (particularly Galicia), Portugal, Germany, France Great Britain (the British built the country’s first railways) and Poland. Most emigrated in the hope of escaping poverty at home; others to escape repression. Montevideo also has a substantial Jewish community.The city expanded from the original colonial settlement (now the Old Town) inland, through vegetable gardens and pastureland that is now the city’s Center, and along a series of beaches, now the modern residential suburbs of Pocitos and Carrasco.