Fray Bentos

From the 1860s the plant at Fray Bentos turned the cattle of the Uruguayan plains into products shipped worldwide: first Liebig's meat extract, then the corned beef tin that fed soldiers through two world wars, with a name that became a household word in Britain long after most people forgot it was a place. The site is preserved almost entire, with the slaughter floors, the machinery, the laboratories, the power station and the company town of workers' housing and managers' villas around it, and guided tours run through the buildings. It is an unusually complete record of an industrial process and of the global trade that ran on it, which is why UNESCO listed the whole landscape rather than a single building.

History

The town was founded as Villa Independencia by a decree of 16 April 1859, became capital of the Río Negro department in 1860 and a city in 1900, and takes its name, meaning Friar Benedict, from a reclusive priest. Its main industry was meat processing: the Liebig Extract of Meat Company founded a plant here in 1863, which worked for some 117 years until it shut its gates in 1979, and a local history museum opened on the site in March 2005. On 5 July 2015 the Barrio Anglo, where the plant stands, became a World Heritage Site as the Fray Bentos Cultural-Industrial Landscape (Wikipedia, Fray Bentos).

What's there

• The processing halls - machinery and production lines left in place.
• The power station - the plant's own generating equipment.
• The company town - workers' housing and management villas around the works.
• The museum displays - the labels, tins and trade that made the name famous.

When to go

October to April for pleasant weather. Tours run at set times and are the only way into most of the buildings, so check the schedule before travelling. The site is quiet on weekdays.

Good to know

Access is by guided tour only and mostly in Spanish, which limits what non-speakers take from it. This is industrial heritage rather than scenery, and the slaughter-floor sections are matter-of-fact about what happened there. Fray Bentos is a long way from Montevideo and there is little else in town for visitors.

Nearby

The Argentine border crossing is adjacent; Mercedes and the Río Negro lie east.