Four days in Santiago: the Andes at the end of every street
Three nights in the Chilean capital, walked as the colonial centre, the government quarter and the memory museum, Bellavista and Cerro San Cristobal, and a last morning on Santa Lucia.
- Length
- 4 days, 3 nights
- Where you stay
- Santiago
- Places
- 10 across 4 days
Santiago sits in a bowl. The Andes close off the eastern edge and rise straight out of the suburbs, sometimes with snow on them in the middle of a hot afternoon, and the coastal range does the same job more modestly to the west. On a clear day the mountains are the view from any street running east, and on a bad winter day you cannot see them at all, because the same bowl holds the smog in.
It is also a city that has spent fifty years working out how to talk about seventeen of them. The coup of 1973 and the dictatorship that followed are not tucked away in a footnote here: they have a national museum, a memorial in a former torture centre, and bullet damage on the palace. Ignoring that side of Santiago is possible and would be a waste of a trip.
Three nights covers the centre comfortably, because the sights are packed into about two square kilometres and the metro handles the rest. Chile's real draw is everything outside the capital, so the sensible plan is to see this properly and then leave.
Highlights
- The Pre-Columbian museum, where the Andean mummies are older than anything in Egypt
- La Moneda, the palace the Chilean air force bombed with the president inside it
- La Chascona, Pablo Neruda's Santiago house, built for a mistress and laid out like a ship
- The Vega Central, five hundred stalls of fruit, and lunch at the back for the price of a coffee
- Cerro San Cristobal at the end of the day, with the whole basin and the Andes behind it
Where to stay
Santiago
Pedro de Valdivia founded the city on 12 February 1541 at the foot of a rocky hill in the middle of the valley, and that hill, Santa Lucia, is still there in the middle of the centre with a staircase up it. Seven million people now live in the metropolitan area, which spreads flat across the valley floor until it hits the mountains.
The parts a visitor needs are small and adjacent: the colonial grid around Plaza de Armas, the government quarter along the Alameda, Lastarria and the parks on the river, and Bellavista on the north bank under the big hill. Three nights fit those four areas without repeating a street, and leave the wine valleys and the Cajon del Maipo as reasons to add a day.
Day by day
Day 1 in Santiago
Plaza de Armas, the fish market and the pre-Columbian collection
The colonial centre is a grid of nine blocks by nine, laid out in 1541 and knocked down by earthquakes twice, which is why almost nothing in it is as old as the city. Plaza de Armas is the middle of it and the middle of Chile, with the cathedral on one side and the post office on another, chess players and preachers and shoe shiners in between.
Start with lunch, because the fish market a few blocks north is at its best in the middle of the day and dead by evening. Then the square, then the one museum in Santiago that would be worth a detour in any city.
The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino is small, beautifully lit and organised by culture rather than by date, and it makes a point that is easy to miss: the Chinchorro people on the northern coast of Chile were mummifying their dead thousands of years before the Egyptians started.
- 13:00
Central Market
EatA cast-iron hall from the 1870s, full of fish landed on the Pacific coast that morning. The restaurants in the middle are touristy and fine; the counters around the edge are cheaper and better. Congrio, the local conger eel, is the thing to order.
- 14:45
Plaza De Armas
ArchitectureThe square Valdivia paced out in 1541, still the reference point for the whole country. Cathedral on the west side, the old post office on the north, and a permanent open-air argument about football and politics in the middle.
- 16:00
Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art
HistoricTwo floors of Andean and Mesoamerican material in a converted colonial customs house, labelled properly in English and Spanish. The Chinchorro mummies from the Atacama are the oldest deliberately preserved bodies anywhere, and the textile room is extraordinary.
With more time: The Metropolitan Cathedral on the square is free and takes ten minutes. Two blocks south, San Francisco is the oldest church in the city and has a moai from Easter Island standing in the plaza outside it, which is either a fine piece of national symbolism or an awkward one depending on who you ask. Casa Colorada, the house of the first Chilean head of state after independence, is on the same short walk.
Day 2 in Santiago
La Moneda, and the museum of what happened next
On the morning of 11 September 1973 the Chilean air force bombed its own presidential palace with Salvador Allende inside it. He died there; the building burned; Augusto Pinochet ran the country for the next seventeen years. La Moneda was repaired and is back in use, and the day this took is not something the city glosses over.
Start at the palace. It is a plain neoclassical building, more mint than fortress, which is literally what it was built as in the 1780s. The changing of the guard happens on alternate mornings and is worth timing if the schedule suits. Underneath the square in front of it, an entirely modern cultural centre runs free exhibitions, and the contrast between the two is the point.
The afternoon belongs to the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, out at Quinta Normal on the metro. It is not a comfortable visit. It is calm, exact and full of documents, photographs and voices, with English translation throughout, and it is the most important building in Santiago.
Do something ordinary afterwards. The park next door is large and green, and the walk back through Barrio Yungay is full of old houses and coffee.
- 09:30
La Moneda Presidential Palace
VisitBuilt in the 1780s as the colonial mint and the seat of government ever since. Walk through the courtyards, which are open on weekdays, and look at the north facade where the bomb damage was repaired.
- 10:45
La Moneda Cultural Center
VisitA large modern gallery dug in under the plaza in front of the palace, free and usually showing something good. Also the best air conditioning downtown in January.
- 12:30
Lunch downtown before the metro west
EatThe old counters near the Alameda do a churrasco italiano in about four minutes, standing up. It is beef, avocado, tomato and mayonnaise, the colours of the flag, and it is the national lunch.
- 14:30
Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos
CultureThe national museum of the dictatorship, opened in 2010, covering 1973 to 1990 through testimony, court records, letters and film. Allow two hours and expect the last room to stay with you. English explanations throughout.
With more time: Parque Quinta Normal is directly behind the museum and has the natural history museum and a nineteenth century glasshouse in it, which is the right kind of nothing to do afterwards. If you want to go further into the subject, Villa Grimaldi in the eastern suburbs was a detention and torture centre and is now a memorial park run partly by survivors; it takes a morning of its own and is visited on a guided tour.
Day 3 in Santiago
The Vega market, Neruda's house and the big hill
North of the river is a different city. The Vega Central is Santiago's wholesale fruit and vegetable market and it has been feeding the capital for over a century: five hundred stalls, a wall of coriander and chillies and unfamiliar fruit, and cheap kitchens at the back where the traders eat.
Ten minutes east, in Bellavista, is the strangest house in Chile. Pablo Neruda built La Chascona in the 1950s for Matilde Urrutia, who was not yet his wife and was very much a secret, and he built it up a hillside in separate pieces with a dining room like a ship's cabin and a bar he liked to serve from himself. It was ransacked after the coup, and Matilde held his wake in the wreckage.
Then go up. Cerro San Cristobal is a 722 hectare park rising straight out of Bellavista, with a funicular from the bottom, a cable car across the ridge and a white Virgin on the summit. The view takes in the whole basin and, when the air is clean, the Andes behind it. Go late in the afternoon.
- 09:30
Vega central de Santiago
OtherOver five hundred stalls under one roof, selling to the city rather than to visitors. Go early, buy fruit you cannot identify, and eat at one of the cocinerias upstairs where the stallholders do: cazuela, pastel de choclo, and nothing costing much.
- 11:30
La Chascona
CultureOne of Neruda's three houses, named for Matilde's tangled hair, built in pieces up a slope so that guests had to go outdoors between courses. The audio guide is good and the whole visit is an hour. Book ahead at weekends.
- 13:00
Lunch in Bellavista
EatThe streets around Pio Nono are a wall of restaurants, best in the daytime when the bars are shut. Traditional Chilean food is easy to find here and pastel de choclo is worth ordering once.
- 15:00
Parque Metropolitano
LeisureOne of the largest urban parks in the world, and the hill the city measures its air quality against. Funicular up from Bellavista, cable car along the ridge, and a Japanese garden and a zoo on the slopes. The summit terrace is the photograph everybody takes of Santiago.
With more time: Come down on the Bellavista side for dinner and the quarter is at its best after nine. If you would rather have wine than a view, the Maipo valley starts at the southern edge of the city and two of the historic estates, Cousino Macul and Concha y Toro, run afternoon tours reachable from the metro plus a short taxi.
Day 4 in Santiago
Cerro Santa Lucia, the fine arts museum and a last sandwich
Santa Lucia is the rock Valdivia chose to build behind, and in the nineteenth century a mayor with a large budget turned it into a folly: terraces, fountains, staircases, a small fort and a chapel, all stacked up in the middle of the modern centre. It takes twenty minutes to climb and it is free.
Down the other side, Parque Forestal follows the river and holds the fine arts museum in a domed belle epoque hall built for the centenary of independence. The Chilean nineteenth century painters are the reason to go in, and the building would be worth it anyway.
Flights to Europe leave Santiago in the evening and flights south to Patagonia go all day, so this morning is real either way. Finish at a sandwich counter, which is the correct way to leave Chile.
- 09:30
Cerro Santa Lucia
NatureA rock in the middle of the city, landscaped into terraces and staircases with a fort on top. The view covers the old grid and stops at the towers; Darwin climbed it and there is a plaque with what he said about it.
- 11:00
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes
CultureBuilt for Chile's centenary in 1910 and stocked with three thousand works, mostly Chilean and Latin American. The glass-roofed hall is the best interior in the city and the contemporary museum shares the building.
- 13:00
Fuente Alemana
HistoricA sandwich bar that has been doing one thing since the 1920s, with the beef sliced and grilled in front of you and the queue moving fast. The churrasco is the order. There is nowhere to sit and that is not the point.
With more time: With a later flight, the Gran Torre Santiago in Providencia is the tallest building in South America and has an observation floor near the top, which on a clear day shows you exactly how the mountains hem the city in. Cementerio General, across the Mapocho, is the other option: two million graves, laid out as streets, with presidents, poets and a memorial to the disappeared.
Before you go
Getting in and getting around
Arturo Merino Benitez airport is northwest of the city and the main gateway to Chile, with long-haul flights from Europe, North America and Oceania. There is a tollway most of the way in, so the run to the centre is around half an hour outside rush hour. Take an official taxi or a booked transfer from inside the terminal.
The metro is the best in South America and the reason four days here need no taxis at all: clean, frequent, air conditioned on the newer lines, and reaching every neighbourhood below. Buy a bip! card at any station, load it, and use the same card for the buses. One card can pay for several people; it cannot be refunded, so do not overload it. Transfers between metro and bus inside two hours are free or nearly so.
Everything in the historic centre is within a twenty minute walk of Plaza de Armas. The one thing to plan around is rush hour on Line 1, which is genuinely unpleasant between 08:00 and 09:30.
Eating and drinking
Chile eats a lot of sandwiches and takes them seriously. A churrasco is thin sliced beef; add avocado, tomato and mayonnaise and it becomes a chacarero or an italiano, named for the colours of the flag rather than anything Italian. The old sandwich counters downtown do them properly, standing up, at speed.
The other tradition is seafood, which arrives from the Pacific every morning and is best eaten at the Mercado Central or in a proper restaurant rather than in between: congrio, machas, erizos if you are brave. Pastel de choclo, a sweetcorn and beef pie, is the classic home dish and appears on most traditional menus.
Wine is cheap and good. The Maipo valley begins where the southern suburbs end, and several of the big estates sit inside the metropolitan area, so a half day at a winery does not need a tour bus. Pisco sour is the standard aperitif, and asking whether it is Chilean or Peruvian is a joke that has stopped being funny here.
Where to stay
Lastarria and Bellas Artes, the small grid of streets between the centre and Parque Forestal, are the best base: walkable to everything on the first and last days, full of restaurants, and quiet at night. Providencia, one metro stop east, is greener and residential with good value hotels.
Bellavista, across the river under Cerro San Cristobal, is the nightlife quarter and loud on Friday and Saturday. The financial district out at El Golf and Las Condes is safe, comfortable, and half an hour of metro from anything you came to see.
Smog, heat and earthquakes
The basin traps the air, and from May to September the smog can be bad enough that the city restricts driving and cancels school sport. Winter rain clears it for a day or two at a time and locals are pleased to see it. If your priority is a clear view of the Andes, come between October and April.
Summer, from December to February, is hot and dry and the metro can be stifling. Carry water.
Chile has more large earthquakes than almost anywhere, and Santiago is built for it: modern buildings sway and stay up. If one happens, stay inside, away from windows, and follow the staff. The one thing worth doing on arrival is noting the evacuation route posted in your hotel room.
Staying safe
Santiago is safe by the standards of the continent and has an ordinary big-city pickpocketing problem. Downtown crowds, the metro at rush hour and the markets are where phones and wallets go. Keep your camera in a bag between photographs and avoid the parks after dark.
The blocks immediately around Plaza Baquedano have been the focus of protests for years and can still see them, usually on Friday afternoons and announced in advance. They are easy to walk around and not a reason to change your plans, but do not go and look.
Santiago is often written off as the bit before Patagonia, and the people who do that miss the two best museums in the country and the only city on the continent where you can be on a chairlift ninety minutes after breakfast. It is not beautiful in the way Valparaiso is. It is well run, well fed and boxed in by the biggest mountains you will ever see from an office window.
From here it is an hour and a half by road to the coast, a couple of hours in the air to the Atacama, and three and a half south to Patagonia.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is Santiago worth four days?
- Four days is right if you want the museums and one slow day. Two days covers the centre and the hill if Chile is the real trip and the capital is the way in. What would be a mistake is landing and connecting straight out, because the Pre-Columbian museum and the memory museum are both better than anything you will find further south.
- Should I do Valparaiso as a day trip?
- It is possible, an hour and a half each way by coach, and it is the wrong way to see it. Valparaiso is at its best in the evening and the early morning, when the day trippers have gone. Give it two nights of its own instead.
- What about skiing or the Cajon del Maipo?
- The ski resorts at Farellones and Valle Nevado are about ninety minutes up a road of forty hairpins and run from roughly June to September, which makes Santiago one of very few capitals where you can ski before lunch. The Cajon del Maipo, a river canyon southeast of the city, is the summer version and takes a full day. Either needs a night added.
- How much Spanish do I need?
- Chilean Spanish is quick, drops the ends of words and has its own vocabulary, and it is widely considered the hardest accent in Latin America. Basic Spanish gets you through, English is common in hotels and rarer on the street, and asking someone to repeat something more slowly works fine.
- Can I change this plan?
- Yes. Copy it and shift things around, swap the memory museum for a winery, add the day trip you want.