Historical & Cultural Tours
Discover Santiago de Chile through the history and culture of its neighborhoods.
Cultura Mapocho is an initiative to promote the history and cultural heritage of Santiago. It organizes thematic itineraries around the city’s landmarks.
Individual and group itineraries.
STGO 1: Catastrophic Santiago
An itinerary that shows the hidden evidence of earthquakes and seismic movements which have given the city its character, leaving landmarks and influencing the history of its people. Fires and quakes have formed the character of the city and its inhabitants throughout history, and this itinerary shows these effects with visits to places where marks have been left. It includes a visit to three representative places: the Municipal Theatre, San Agustin church, and the old National Congress yard, where the Compañía de Jesús church was once located.
STGO 2: Literary Santiago.
An itinerary through a Santiago that writers and poets have captured in some of their most outstanding works, visiting places where they lived, loved, killed and died.
The itinerary begins at “La Chascona”, Pablo Neruda’s house in Santiago’s old “La Chimba” neighborhood. The third house of the poet, it is located in the highest point of Márquez de la Plata street, close to “San Cristóbal” hill. The itinerary continues through the “Alameda de las Delicias”, portrayed by Luis Orrego Luco in the first pages of his “Casa Grande” novel, and then through the “Paseo Ahumada” until reaching the old building of “Hotel Crillón”, a nearly mythical place in the history of urban literature: it is not just the stage of Joaquín Edwards Bello’s novel “La Chica del Crillón”, and of the movie of the same name directed by Jorge Délano, but also the place poet María Luisa Bombal left shortly before shooting Eulogio Sánchez, with whom she had a love affair. Also, in a busy hall of the same Hotel Crillón, years later in April 1955, another writer, María Carolina Geel, would succeed in murdering her lover, Roberto Pumarino Valenzuela, with five gun shots.
STGO 3: “Brasil” Neighborhood: Immigration and Depopulation.
The neighborhood surrounding the centuries old “Plaza Brasil”, with the avenue of the same name as its axis, was in the past the western limit of Santiago. Wonderful memories of a society that was beginning to change rapidly with the approach of the XXth century are kept in this place. For example, in the beautiful “Iglesia de la Preciosa Sangre” and its convent, work of Italian architect Eusebio Chelli, Teresa Wilms Montt was locked in because she “felt and thought too much”, until poet Vicente Huidobro rescued her and took her to Buenos Aires, Madrid, London, New York and Paris, where she would become a famous writer and poet.
STGO 4: The original layout and the “Barrio Cívico”
Many things have changed in Santiago since “Alarife Gamboa”, following Pedro de Valdivia’s instructions, drew the layout of its streets and blocks in February 1541, using “regla y cordel” (ruler and string). The main official buildings of the city are not clustered around the “Plaza de Armas”, as it was originally, and even the “Plaza de Armas” has changed a lot since then.
The itinerary begins at the place where the city was founded, with a visit to the cathedral and an overview of the historical buildings that surround the “Plaza de Armas”, accompanied by an explanation of three maps of the city that show its evolution in time. The itinerary continues to the “Barrio Cívico”, where the main public buildings are now located. The buildings of the old “Congreso Nacional” are shown, together with a description of their long history. The itinerary includes visits to the old headquarters of “El Mercurio” newspaper, the “Plaza de la Constitución” square, the ministries, the old “Hotel Carrera” and, finally, “El Palacio de la Moneda”.
STGO 5: Popular walks and the “Quinta Normal”.
Since it establishment in 1840, first as a center for agricultural research and as a botanic garden, and afterwards as a bustling space of cultural activities, the ”Quinta” has been for Santiago’s inhabitants a place of meeting for those who plan to visit its museums or simply to take a walk through its gardens.
Inside the “Quinta” one can find five museums, two cultural centers, one greenhouse, a medical center, a university campus, a pond, skating, football and tennis courts, a municipal pool, and even a circus tent. The “Metro de Santiago”, the underground train, has a station at its gates.
Within the neighborhood, which limits with Yungai neighborhood, one also finds the Lourdes and the Cristo Pobre sanctuaries, the warehouses of the “Dirección de Aprovisionamiento del Estado”, now transformed into a library (Biblioteca de Santiago), the Matucana 100 cultural center, the “Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende” museum, the “Museo Pedagógico” museum, as well as numerous little streets remarkable for their architecture and traditional atmosphere.
STGO 6: Santa Lucía Hill: the foundational myth.
This entertaining itinerary follows a route through Santa Lucía hill (Huelén, for the mapuche people), visiting various landmarks, telling the story of its main architect, and shattering many myths about the foundation of Santiago. We will see the big stairways, the Neptuno square, the old Spanish coat of arms designed for the “Casa de Moneda”, the squares where Spanish fortifications once laid, and a variety of interesting monuments and sculptures, like the ones donated by Caracas and Buenos Aires, the statue of Caupolicán from Nicanor Plaza, the hermitage where the rests of Vicuña Mackena’s family are buried, the canon that signals midday in Santiago, among other signs and marks from Santiago’s history. We will learn about a tribute given to the “dissidents”, whose corpses were disposed of on the eastern side of the hill in the times when the Catholic Church didn’t allow “heretics” to be buried in its cemeteries. We will also visit the old “Fortaleza Hidalgo” fortress, where in the past the first astronomical observatory of the southern hemisphere was located.
STGO 7: The Yungay neighborhood and the intellectuals.
Although this neighborhood was formed in the 1840-50 decade, it was active even before due to the heavy traffic through the old “camino real” (royal way) to Valparaiso, that followed what currently is San Pablo street. It is considered the first neighborhood planned outside the original layout of the city and was successively occupied by different social groups. It’s distinctive style, however, was the result of scientists and intellectuals moving in as they started working in the “Quinta Normal”, which is close by.
Besides the “Plaza del Roto Chileno” square, it’s possible to see here the Iglesia de San Saturnino, patron of earthquakes, Ignacio Domeyko’s house, as well as the famous alleys and cites close to Hurtado Rodríguez, Lucrecia Valdés and Adriana Cousiño streets.
STGO 8: Dieciocho neighborhood: miners and their palaces.
“Dieciocho” is one of the most elegant neighborhoods the city has ever had, and some of its large mansions, including those belonging to the Ochagavía, Irarrázaval and Iñiguez families, are still in place, not far from the San Ignacio church and the Astoreca Palace.
Here lived the wealthiest among Santiago’s inhabitants. It was a preferred location because of its proximity to the commercial and administrative center of the country, and the higher classes started to move in around 1860.
Today, it’s possible to visit the Cousiño Palace, one of the most noteworthy residences in the area, richly decorated and occupied by a family of wealthy miners until only recently. It’s possible to visit the “Club Hípico”, where the aristocracy entertained itself in the past and still today an important racecourse.
STGO 9: Parque Forestal: history and art.
The “Parque Forestal”, a nearly one century old park, stretches form Plaza Italia to the old “Estación Mapocho” railway station, now transformed into a big cultural center.
The “Plaza Italia” square marks the eastern limit of the park. All along the park there are monuments to be found, including the “Estation Mapocho” station, the “Bellas Artes” museum, the “Arte Contemporáneo” contemporary art museum, a monument donated by France, a fountain donated by Germany, the Italian monument and the new “Estación Pirque” station. All but the Pirque station are still standing, since 1920 when engineer and landscape designer Guillermo Renner finalized the park’s construction. More statues and monuments have been added with the passage of time, like the tributes to Rubén Darío, Arturo Prat, Tomás Cochrane, Blanco Encalada, Abraham Lincoln, to the Writers and Journalists of the Independence, to Manuel Magallanes Moure, Bartolomé Mitre and Cristóbal Colón.
Next to the park, within a consolidated residential neighborhood, many art galleries, bookstores, bars, coffee shops and restaurants have appeared, creating a lively cultural and artistic center.
STGO 10: Historical and cultural Santiago.
This itinerary through the main milestones in Santiago’s history begins approximately in the place of its foundation, the current “Plaza de Armas” square, with a brief explanation of the city’s growth, using historical maps that can be found there.
The location of the first buildings is shown, and their current use, before visiting the Santiago Cathedral.
The next step are the gardens of the old national parliament (Congreso Nacional), showing the houses on the northern side of “Catedral” street, among them the García de la Huerta house, the Huneeus house and the Edwards palace, now the headquarters of the diplomatic academy of Chile. To the south of the parliament building are the small Montt Varas square and the Courts (Tribunales de Justicia) including the Supreme Court. To the west the old headquarters of El Mercurio newspaper and to the east the “Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino” (Chilean Pre-Columbian art museum), build in 1805 to house the royal customs palace (“Palacio de la Real Aduana”) during colonial administration.
Back on the square one can see the buildings of the Portal Fernández Concha and the palacio arzobispal. To the south we follow Ahumada, one of the main streets of the city turned into a pedestrian walk in the seventies, where we find many shops, the “Banco de Chile”, the old “Hotel Crillón” and, by turning at Bombero Ossa street, the place where the first cinema in the city was located and of the original location of the Catholic University. To the west, following Agustinas street, one arrives to the northern side of the “Plaza de la Constitución” square, close to the Central Bank of Chile.
From the “Plaza de la Constitución” one can observe the buildings of La Nación newspaper, the old Hotel Carrera, the Ministry of Economy, the “Palacio de La Moneda”, the “Intendencia Metropolitana” (metropolitan council), the Ministry of Work and monuments to the presidents Allende, Allesandri and Frei, and to Diego Portales. On the other side of the square one can reach the Palacio de La Moneda, seat of the Executive Power and House of Government, and cross it till the esplanade of the “Plaza de la Ciudadanía” square. From there one can observe the southern façade of “La Moneda”, the public buildings of the “Barrio Cívico” neighborhood, and the statues of Arturo Alessandri Palma, José de San Martín, Bernardo O’Higgins and general Manuel Bulnes. This itinerary ends with a visit to the “Palacio de La Moneda” cultural center.
