Casapueblo is a building unlike any other in South America. The Uruguayan artist Carlos Páez Vilaró built it over more than forty years on a cliff above Punta Ballena, west of Punta del Este, as a studio and home that he extended room by room as the work required. The result is a structure that cascades down the cliff face in white curves and terraces, resembling at a distance a Mediterranean hillside village that has been condensed into a single organic form. It houses a museum, a hotel, and a bar that serves drinks to guests watching the sunset, which is the specific reason Casapueblo has become one of the most visited sites in Uruguay. The sunset from Casapueblo is not incidental to the building. It was built to face west, toward the water, to receive the last light of the day.

Why Casapueblo Works for Ceremonies

The terrace on the western face of Casapueblo is positioned directly above the water at a height that puts the sunset on the horizon at eye level. The building’s white facade catches the orange and pink light of the last hour before sunset and reflects it back in a way that photographs as warm and luminous rather than simply orange. I position ceremony couples on the lower terraces where the building rises behind them and the water and sky are visible on either side. The building is not a neutral backdrop; it has character and texture that actively contribute to the compositional context of every frame. The curved white walls, the small windows, the irregular terracing: all of it creates an architectural backdrop that is specific to this location and impossible to find anywhere else.

Casapueblo Uruguay at sunset with the white organic building structure reflecting golden sunset light above the water — Casapueblo at golden hour. The white facade reflects the sunset in a way that changes the quality of light falling on the couple below it. This is not just a building with a sunset behind it. The building is an active participant in the light of the scene.

Logistics and Timing

Casapueblo is open to visitors during the day and has a hotel component for guests who want to stay the night. For ceremony sessions I arrive in the late afternoon, around 4pm, and work the building in the hour before the main tourist arrival for the sunset viewing. The peak crowd arrives at around 5pm in summer and can number several hundred people, so ceremony timing needs to be either before the crowd or after it disperses, which happens quickly after the sun drops. I typically time the ceremony itself for 4:30pm and the formal photographs for the golden hour window between 5:30pm and 7pm, which requires being at the location through the crowd peak but produces photographs in the extraordinary light that follows.

Couple on the terraces of Casapueblo Uruguay with the white curved building and warm golden sunset light surrounding them — The terraces of Casapueblo after the main tourist crowd has dispersed. The golden hour light here lasts thirty to forty-five minutes and changes colour continuously from orange to pink to the blue-grey of post-sunset. Each phase produces a different set of photographs.

The Blue Hour After Sunset

The light at Casapueblo does not end with the sunset. After the sun drops below the water, the western sky transitions through pink to deep blue over approximately thirty minutes, and the building, now lit from inside by its hotel and museum lighting, begins to glow. The combination of the blue hour sky and the warm interior light on the white facades produces a set of photographs that I find as interesting as the golden hour work. Couples who stay through the blue hour consistently describe it as the moment the session became something unexpected. The crowd has gone. The staff are closing the museum. The building is lit from within. And the sky is still doing what the Uruguayan coast does at the end of a day.