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Tres Cruces

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Tres Cruces

  • February 4, 2009
  • Rated 4 of 5 by SeenThat from Tel Aviv, Israel
Tres Cruces




Tres Cruces: the Neighborhood

The name of the area means "Three Crosses" and goes back to 1813, when the "Tres Cruces Congress" took place there; the congress predates the actual republic and was related to its later foundation.

Tres Cruces is located at the junction of three major roads: 18 de Julio Avenue, 8 de Octubre Avenue and Artigas Boulevard; Italia Avenue begins here as well. It is not exaggerated thus to state that despite its slightly off-center position, this neighborhood hosts the main junction in town giving rapid access to all its parts and main exits. Moreover, some of the city better known landmarks are located here.

Since 1994 this neighborhood had experienced a major development due to the bus terminal and shopping mall placed in it. It became an almost unavoidable stop for travelers passing through Montevideo.

Two monuments immediately catch the visitors’ attention: the "Cruz Papal" and the "Obelisco a los Constituyentes de 1830." The first is a huge white cross with the statue of Pope John Paul II at its front; it commemorates his visit to the city in 1987. The cross location marks the place of the mass given by him during the occasion.

Nearby is an obelisk commemorating the constitutional congress of 1830. Built of granite and bronze and of forty meters height; a hexagonal fountain surrounds it. It was inaugurated in 1938 at the junction of Artigas Boulevard with 18 de Julio Avenue. This was the place of a famous protest against the military dictatorship in 1983.

Shopping Tres Cruces

Montevideo got its first shopping mall only in 1985 ("Montevideo Shopping Center", near the Pocitos Beach); in 1994 three more were inaugurated including the Shopping Tres Cruces. Despite being of humble size, it enjoys the adjacent bus terminal (on the ground level) traffic; official statistics talk of more than twenty million visitors per year. This number exceeds several times the population of the whole country.

Untypical of the local city landscape, the whole building was built with bricks and those were left uncovered, creating a striking contrast with the surrounding area. However, since it is at a lower level than the adjacent avenue, most of it is half hidden; the building can be appreciated only from close by.

The shopping mall main characteristic is its appeal to passing by crowds that can dedicate to it only short periods of time before the bus trip expecting them; due to this most customers can be defined as not very wealthy. The result is a plethora of small shops selling low quality items, souvenirs from Montevideo and Uruguay and all imaginable type of food and snacks. A visit to the shopping mall unrelated to a bus trip is almost unimaginable.

Several coffee stalls were placed on its main corridor, on the ground floor – where the bus terminal is – and offer coffee of remarkable quality for such surroundings.

Bus Terminal Tres Cruces

This bus terminal transformed the transport landscape in Montevideo and Uruguay. Before its inauguration there was not a definite travel hub in the city; most of the long distance buses left from Plaza Cagancha. The last is a small plaza near the city center and was highly inappropriate for such a task.

The new terminal occupies the ground floor of the Shopping Tres Cruces. Most of this area features the selling windows of a plethora of companies selling bus tickets to everywhere in Uruguay and a few international locations. Buses to Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and even Sao Paulo in Brazil are available here; combinations of bus and Buquebus trips are also available. Buquebus is the name of the fast boats service connecting Buenos Aires with Montevideo.

A direct trip costs well over a hundred American dollars, but the expense is justified; I found the trip comparable to the crossing of the Pearl River with Hoover Boats from Macau to Hong Kong. A way of lowering the expense is taking a bus to Colonia del Sacramento and then the boat in a shorter line to Buenos Aires.

Colonia del Sacramento is one of the major touristic attractions in Uruguay – maybe even in South America – there are frequent buses to there from Montevideo. Such a detour is thus fully justified from a traveler’s point of view and highly enjoyable.

In the immediate vicinity of the terminal are many restaurants serving typical Uruguayan dishes in a more relaxed environment. Their prices are also significantly lower than within the terminal and closer to the normal levels elsewhere in town.

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