The plaza occupies ground that once bristled with defenses. It was laid out over the old Citadel of Montevideo, and when independence made the walls obsolete, the city tore them down and opened itself outward. In 1837 planners designed the Ciudad Nueva, the New City, and the architect Carlo Zucchi drew the Independence Square as its centerpiece, taking inspiration from the elegant Rue de Rivoli in Paris. The square promptly became a center of national gravity, anchored by the Estevez Palace, then the seat of the Uruguayan government. The gateway of the old citadel still stands at the plaza's western edge, a stone arch marking the seam where the seventeenth-century city ends and the nineteenth-century one begins.

For a time the square sat strangely empty, a grand space waiting to be filled. At the start of the twentieth century the French landscape architect Carlos Thays took charge, laying out four French-inspired flower beds with fountains and planting the palm trees that became his signature. The square's defining monument came in 1923, when President Baltasar Brum inaugurated the equestrian statue of Artigas, its 17-meter bronze rider mounted on a granite base sculpted by the Italian artist Angelo Zanelli. The general gazes out over a plaza ringed by landmarks: the soaring Palacio Salvo, the neoclassical Solis Theatre, and the modern Executive Tower where the president works.

Artigas died in exile in Paraguay in 1850, and his journey back to this square was slow and politically fraught. His remains returned to Uruguay in 1972, resting first in the Central Cemetery. Then, on September 27, 1974, during the country's civil-military dictatorship, authorities approved building an underground mausoleum beneath the plaza. The architects Lucas Rios Demalde and Alejandro Moron designed two broad granite staircases descending to the chamber where the urn was placed, with a granite mastaba above ground serving as a skylight. The mausoleum opened to the public on June 19, 1977, the anniversary of Artigas's birth and a national holiday. A permanent honor guard from the Cuerpo de Blandengues, the cavalry corps in which Artigas first served, keeps watch, and the changing of the guard draws crowds.

What surrounds the plaza explains why so much happens here. To the east begins 18 de Julio, the city's principal avenue, and the Palacio Salvo rises beside it, a 105-meter skyscraper finished in 1928 that briefly held the title of the tallest building in South America. The Solis Theatre, which opened in 1856 as the oldest major opera house in the Americas, stands to the southwest. Given this concentration of power and symbol, the square has long been Uruguay's public stage. Since 2010 presidents have received the ceremonial sash here, in front of the Executive Tower, and the annual pride march steps off from this very ground. Even Hollywood has noticed: the plaza has been digitally destroyed by giant robots in a short film, leveled by a fictional earthquake in a public-safety ad, and fenced off for a Netflix production.