Francisco Piria was a developer, publisher and speculator of Italian descent who bought a stretch of the Uruguayan coast and set about inventing a resort on it, laying out a town, building a grand hotel and drawing visitors from Montevideo and Buenos Aires. His own residence stands inland from the seafront he created, framed by gardens at the foot of the hills: an Italianate villa of some ambition, with towers, terraces and a formal approach that announces the ambitions of a self-made man. The house is inseparable from Piria's reputation as a student of alchemy and esoteric traditions, and visitors are shown how symbolism and deliberate arrangement have been read into the layout of house and grounds. Today the building operates as a museum, furnished and interpreted for the public, while the town below carries his name and his street plan. The film links biography, architecture and the invention of tourism on the River Plate coast, and works equally well within heritage strands and portraits of unusual historical figures.
