Uruguay Departments

Uruguay is a small country with a simple shape: a rolling green plain between Brazil to the north and east, Argentina across the Uruguay river to the west, and the Río de la Plata and the Atlantic to the south. Its 19 departments (departamentos) are the only tier of government that matters to most people, they cover the country without a gap, and they are what the licence plates, the road signs and the weather forecast are all named after.

The quiz: Name to place, on the map
Grouped by: The Litoral, the Norte, the Centro, and the Sur y Este
In the game: 19 departments

Start

What you are looking at

The 19 departments of today, named in Spanish. Montevideo, the capital, is both the smallest and the one with the most people, and it is surrounded on the land side by Canelones. Everything else is one of eighteen mostly rural departments, several of them of a similar size, which is what makes the map harder than the count suggests.

The groups are not an official classification, because Uruguay publishes none. They are the four parts the country is usually described in: the Litoral along the Uruguay river, the Norte on the Brazilian border, the Centro between them, and the Sur y Este, which holds the capital and both coasts. They are a way to learn the map a piece at a time.

How to place one

Start with the river. The Litoral is a chain of six departments down the Uruguay river, from Artigas in the corner to Colonia opposite Buenos Aires.
Find Montevideo. The capital sits on the Río de la Plata, with Canelones to the east and north and San José to the west.
Follow the Brazilian border. Artigas, Rivera, Cerro Largo and Rocha run along it from the northwest to the Atlantic.
Fill in the middle last. Durazno, Flores, Florida and Lavalleja are the interior departments with no coast and no foreign border.

Every department, by group

Litoral6 departments: Artigas, Colonia, Paysandú, Río Negro, Salto, Soriano
Norte3 departments: Cerro Largo, Rivera, Tacuarembó
Centro5 departments: Durazno, Flores, Florida, Lavalleja, Treinta y Tres
Sur y Este5 departments: Canelones, Maldonado, Montevideo, Rocha, San José

Worked examples

Montevideo

The capital

Montevideo is a small department on the Río de la Plata, the smallest of the 19, and it is home to about forty percent of the country.

Rocha

The Atlantic corner

Rocha fills the southeast corner, touching Brazil at the end of the border and the Atlantic along its whole southern edge, with Maldonado to its west.

Tacuarembó

The largest

Tacuarembó is the largest department, a broad inland block in the north between Rivera and Durazno, with no coast.