The Palacio Salvo is a hundred-meter tower on Plaza Independencia in Montevideo, inaugurated in 1928 and for a time the tallest building in South America; twin of the Palacio Barolo across the estuary, it is the eastern node of the River Plate pair in Operation Northern Lighthouse.
| Type | Building (tower with lantern) |
| Location | Plaza Independencia, Montevideo |
| Built | 1928 |
| Architect | Mario Palanti |
| Spanish entry | El Palacio Salvo |
Description
A real building, the work of Mario Palanti, who had built the Barolo in Buenos Aires a few years earlier. Both are eclectic towers crowned by a lantern, designed to answer each other across the water; tradition holds they were conceived as a pair — a lighthouse on each shore — so that their lights, lit together, would close the Río de la Plata between two eyes of fire.
Role
Beside Operation Northern Lighthouse — the hidden wiring of lighthouses uncovered by the gesta of the Malvinas of 1966 — the Salvo becomes a node. If the Barolo is the peg of the western shore, the Salvo is that of the eastern: together they form the River Plate pair on the line that runs from the islands to the Claromecó Lighthouse (1922) and up to Cape May and the ice of Thule.