The Calle de los Suspiros is a single short block of the Barrio Histórico that has become the most photographed street in Uruguay. The cobblestones are laid from rounded river pebbles, the colonial houses on either side are single-storey and painted in warm earth tones, and a tangle of bougainvillea and other flowering plants trails from the walls and over the rooftops.
It is genuinely beautiful, and genuinely very visited. In the hours when the day ferries from Buenos Aires are in, tour groups queue for photographs and the street can feel like a set. The solution is simple: come early morning or late afternoon, when the light is better and the visitors fewer.
The street leads to the Portón de Campo, the old city gate and one of the best-preserved sections of the 18th-century fortifications. From here you can walk along the remaining bastions and walls, looking out over the Río de la Plata, to reach the lighthouse at the western tip of the peninsula.