There's a fact that almost no one outside Uruguay knows and that the people of Durazno love to recall: for one year, between October 1827 and October 1828, Durazno was the capital of the Republic. It's the only city in the Uruguayan interior to hold that title before Montevideo definitively established itself as the seat of government. That a small, newly founded village in the middle of the countryside came to be, even briefly, the political center of the emerging country says a lot about the turbulent era in which it was born and about the strategic weight of its location in the geographical center of the territory.
The village had been founded on 12 October 1821 by the then colonel Fructuoso Rivera —later the first constitutional president of Uruguay—, under the name San Pedro del Durazno, on the banks of the Yí River. The goal was to settle and organize the interior, gathering the people scattered across the countryside after years of war, in a region of farming vocation where cattle-raising had ruled since colonial times. Its location, practically in the heart of the country, answered to that logic of controlling and articulating the territory.
The original name combined the religious dedication usual in the foundings of the era with a reference to the natural setting: the abundance of peach trees ('duraznos') —wild fruit trees, a legacy of the first colonial estancias— that grew beside the Yí River. Over time, popular usage simplified the name until only 'Durazno' remained, as the city and the department are known today.
Durazno's central location proved strategic from the start. With the development of the roads and, later, the railway, the city consolidated as a communications hub of the Uruguayan interior, a crossing point and a service center for a vast rural region. That condition of a road crossroads, on what is today Route 5, marked its growth and its role within the country over two centuries.
The Yí River has always been a central element in the life of Durazno. Its waters and its shores marked the development of the city, offering resources, a natural setting and, over time, a space of recreation. The river beaches —such as the now popular El Sauzal Beach—, the waterfront and the wooded banks of native woodland became meeting and enjoyment places for the population, especially in summer.
The department of Durazno developed around farming activity, with cattle-raising and agriculture as pillars of its economy from the colonial period and throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The city grew as a service center for that vast rural region, with its shops, its market and its close bond with the countryside. The local culture reflects that root: the warm treatment, the criollo traditions and the appreciation of rural life, which over time would give rise to the Gaucho Gathering that today accompanies the Folklore Festival.
In the early 20th century, the city's bond with its river was embodied in engineering works such as the so-called Puente Viejo, a submersible road bridge inaugurated in 1903 under the direction of engineer Federico Capurro, and the nearby railway bridge, testimonies of how infrastructure sought to master and make use of the Yí's floods. That riverside and country identity is what gives Durazno its character of a deep interior city, quiet and authentic.
Over the course of the 20th century, Durazno consolidated its role as one of the great communications hubs of the Uruguayan interior. Its position practically in the geographical center of the country, on what would become Route 5 —the main road axis connecting Montevideo with the north of the territory—, made it an obligatory crossing point for the transport of people and of the farming production of a vast region.
The development of the railway reinforced that role: Durazno became a key station on the interior's railway network, with the historic railway bridge over the Yí River as one of its most visible symbols. That combination of roads and railways made the city a center of services, commerce and administration for the whole surrounding farming region, consolidating its status as a departmental capital of weight within the country.
This condition of a road and railway crossroads explains why, to this day, Durazno functions as a natural stop and a convenient base for those touring the Uruguayan interior, with direct connections to Tacuarembó to the north, and to Florida, Trinidad and Montevideo to the south.
If there's one thing that gave Durazno national projection in recent decades, it's its National and International Folklore Festival, one of the most important popular-music events in Uruguay. Born to celebrate and spread folklore and criollo music, the festival became an unmissable annual date that, every summer —generally in early February, in the Parque de la Hispanidad—, brings together in the city artists and audiences from all over the country and the region, reaching in recent years its fiftieth edition and surpassing it.
During the festival days, Durazno becomes the capital of Uruguayan folklore: the music, the payadas (improvised sung duels), the traditional dances and the gathering of the folk community fill the city with visitors and festive spirit. To the musical show is added the traditional Gaucho Gathering, with parades, rodeos and the celebration of the country traditions of the center of the country, which deepens the bond between the festival and the rural identity of Durazno.
The festival symbolizes Durazno's place in Uruguayan popular culture: a city of the center of the country, of country and riverside root, that opens its doors to tradition and music. Together with the attractions of the Yí River and the rural tourism of the surroundings, this cultural vocation has consolidated Durazno as an interior destination with an identity of its own, where the natural, the historical and the cultural go hand in hand.