The Santa Teresa Fortress is located 305 km from the city of Montevideo and 36 km from the international settlement of Chuy, on the border with Brazil. It is just two kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean. Route 9, the former Angostura Road, runs just 500 m from the fortress, separating it from Laguna Negra, which is 2 km to the west. The fortress is part of the Santa Teresa National Park, created to protect it.
The current Santa Teresa Fortress was built by the Spanish crown, although its foundation and name are due to Portugal. In the brief period from October 1762 to 1775, three fortifications were built.
The signing of the Treaty of El Pardo (1761) effectively annulled the Treaty of Madrid (1750), so the Governor and Captain General of the Captaincy of Rio de Janeiro, Gomes Freire de Andrade, Count of Bobadela, anticipated the consequences for the southern region, which he knew well. He ordered the Governor of the Rio Grande Colony of São Pedro, Colonel Elói Madureira, to immediately dispatch troops from Laguna to the Grande Line of Castles. The troops were commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Tomás Luis de Osorio, commander of the Cavalry troops of the Dragoon Regiment and Fort Jesús, María, José de Río Pardo.
Gathering just over a thousand men, the Portuguese strategy was to quickly build a fortified defensive line south of Fort San Miguel on the Chuí stream to halt the ongoing Spanish invasion following the conquest of Colonia del Sacramento in October 1762 by the Governor of Buenos Aires, Pedro de Ceballos, at the head of nearly three thousand men gathered in Maldonado.
Osorio had a field fortification built in December 1762, garrisoned by nearly 400 soldiers and armed with some small-caliber artillery. The chosen location was the Angostura Pass near Monte de Castillos Grande, closing the land route along the coast that ran from Colonia del Sacramento to the town of Río Grande.
First fortification (1762)
Design: Engineer Gómez de Mello (Portuguese)
It consisted of a trench dug into the slope of a local hill, known as Castillo Chico, which was completed with a fence of logs. The wood was transported from the area of Fort San Miguel, some 30 km away, a daunting task for the time, as countless swamps and streams had to be waded through.
On October 6, 1762, "the cornerstone was laid at the foot of the foundation, and Mass was sung with all military pomp," Osorio informed the superior. He named the future fortification after Saint Teresa, as she was a saint of Bobadela's particular devotion.
After the war, Colonel Osorio returned to his country. After being court-martialed, accused of failing to adequately defend the site, he was found guilty and hanged in Lisbon by order of the Count of Oerias, later Marquis of Pombal. Shortly afterward, Osorio's wife provided evidence that forced Pombal to post an edict on Lisbon street corners, declaring that Osorio's execution would not transmit infamy to his descendants.
Second fortification (1763)
Design: Engineer Francisco Rodríguez Cardozo (Spanish)
During the war between Spain and Portugal, Spanish General Pedro de Cevallos took it by capitulation on April 19, 1763, capturing Osorio, who, along with just over 100 men from the garrison, was transferred to Maldonado.
Cevallos ordered the construction of another fortification, oriented against Portuguese Brazil, designed by engineer Francisco Rodríguez Cardozo. Materials used in the previous fortification were used, to which some granite stones were added, from the work done by four Portuguese stonemasons. Ceballos then continued his march toward São Pedro do Río Grande, and in the same month he captured Fort San Miguel, near the Chuí Stream.
The Treaty of San Ildefonso (1777) ratified Spanish possession of the Santa Teresa Fortress and Fort San Miguel.
Third fortification (1765-1775)
Design: Engineer Bartolomé Howel (French)
This is the current Santa Teresa Fortress, designed by the French engineer Bartolomé Howel (Havelle). There were other improvement projects later, which were not carried out, and had they been done, they would have given the building a greater architectural significance than it currently has. Faced with the imminent British invasion, in 1775, engineer Bernardo Lecocq carried out reinforcement works on the fort's structure. Further repairs were made in 1797.
Subsequent Military Events
In 1776, a year after the completion of the Santa Teresa Fortress, Portugal once again threatened Spain's borders in these parts of the Americas. Governor Juan José de Vértiz y Salcedo traveled from Buenos Aires to the fortress to organize the defense, awaiting General Pedro de Cevallos and his troops.Upon their arrival, they received news of the signing of the Peace Treaty of San Ildefonso, suspending all actions. Cevallos was awarded the rank of Captain General and appointed First Viceroy of the Río de la Plata.
From that moment on, the fortress was controlled by one side or the other until, in 1828, with the emergence of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, it definitively became the property of that state. By the Treaty of May 15, 1852, which established the border demarcation at the mouth of the Chuí Stream, the two forts (San Miguel and Santa Teresa) remained in Uruguayan territory.
Abandonment and Restoration
Uruguay began to be established, and for almost a century, the nascent state lacked the resources to preserve historical monuments. Thus, the decline of the Santa Teresa Fortress began. In any case, it served as a watchtower on the border during the presidencies of Fructuoso Rivera and Manuel Oribe, between 1830 and 1843.
During the so-called Great War, in the mid-19th century, Manuel Oribe's forces took refuge there, after which the structure remained abandoned. In 1895, it was reoccupied as a prison.
However, total abandonment soon followed, aggravated by the looting of its stones and the constant threat of the dunes that began to cover it in the late 19th century. It then served as a shelter for livestock and bats; the latter inspired former President Dr. Baltasar Brum to write a literary composition.
In 1921, when Dr. Baltasar Brum was President of the Republic, historian and archaeologist Horacio Arredondo conceived and proposed its restoration to the government. Approval was granted in 1928, and the project was later expanded to preserve the San Miguel Fort and the Cerro Fortress in Montevideo.
Since then, and after its reconstruction was completed in the 1940s, the Santa Teresa Fortress has become a museum and a much-visited tourist attraction. It is one of the three colonial-era bastions, along with the San Miguel Fort and the General Artigas Fortress, that still survive in South America.
Walls
It has the shape of an irregular pentagon, and its five corners are finished in projecting bastions whose crossbars make it impossible to scale the walls. The perimeter of the fortress measures 652 meters, and it occupies one hectare of land.
The walls are gigantic, built with enormous granite ashlars, strictly equal in size and perfectly carved. The outer wall is about four meters thick at the base and about two meters thick at the inner wall. The space between the two is filled with a solid embankment that is up to 7 meters wide in some places. The height of the outer walls reaches 11.5 meters at some points.
The fortress has 41 cannon embrasures, artfully constructed with large granite blocks.
There are five sentry boxes corresponding to each corner of the pentagon, elegantly constructed in the shape of a pulpit with carved stones.
The Main Gate
It is built of solid wood with an arch at the top and faces west. "The Relief Gate" faces east and is smaller than "the Main Gate," which 19th-century historians refer to as such.
Residences
The fortress could accommodate about 300 men inside. The interior buildings, also made of ashlar stone, have been perfectly preserved since the colonial era, having been carefully restored and their roofs replaced. These buildings are as follows: the flag room and the guardhouse, to the sides of the main gate; the majority, which formerly housed the chapel, two large stables; the powder magazine, built with enormous granite ashlars; and the cells.
Topography of the Area
The region is characterized by vast expanses of dunes along the coast, as well as a succession of wetlands located to the west and north. These estuaries are occasionally interrupted by mild elevations, which usually stand out in contrast to the flat landscape. The fortress was strategically located on a rocky rise 58 meters above sea level, next to the Camino de la Angostura, the only passage between the estuaries and the sea. Army Parks Service
Santa Teresa National Park
National Route No. 9, Km 302
Rocha Department, Uruguay
Phone: (+598) 4477 2103
(+598) 98 620 828
Copyright © 2017 - 2026 Army Parks Service - Cbo. 2° (R) Martín Acosta
Rocha Department Coat of Arms
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