Chile » Santiago

In Santiago visitors prepared to venture beyond their hotel lobby will find a city of lively markets, atmospheric old quarters and shady parks with thriving artistic, social and cultural scenes. The city’s museums, albeit small, boast impressive collections, while quality cuisine is accessible to those on even the tightest of budgets.

Attractions

Cerro San Cristóbal

Cerro San Cristóbal is a hill in the Barrio Bellavista section of Santiago, Chile. The hill rises 860 m above the rest of Santiago; the peak is the highest point in the city. Its original indigenous name was Tupahue. It was named by the Spanish conquistadors for St Christopher, in recognition of its use as a landmark. At the peak, there is a church with an amphitheatre, and a 22 m statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary donated by France in the 1920s. Pope John Paul II gave mass there in 1987. The spot is a superb location from which to view the city when the smog permits it. At its foothills is the Metropolitan Zoo. 

Plaza de Armas (Arms Square)

Since colonial times, Santiago’s focus has been its main square, the Plaza de Armas. Surrounded by the grandest of the city’s surviving Spanish public buildings, including the Metropolitan Cathedral and the ornate Correos Central (central post office), it acts as a haven from Santiago’s often oppressive traffic. Local artists display their latest canvasses in the square, which on weekday evenings is the scene of a thriving Santiago institution, when locals set up trestle tables and pit their wits against each other in fiercely contested chess matches. Another well-attended attraction is the weekly outdoor concert performed by the Santiago police band on Sunday mornings.

Santiago Parks

Santiago’s most attractive features are its four huge parks that offer spectacular views of the Andes, as well as welcome respite from the city’s traffic. All of the following parks are free and are open from dawn to dusk. The landscaped hill, Cerro Santa Lucia, to the east of the downtown area, was where Araucanian Indians besieged Santiago’s original Spanish settlers for two years, before reinforcements arrived from Peru. Now under siege by urban sprawl, it is popular among courting couples by day and a notorious gay pick-up spot by night. From its summit there are uninterrupted views of the Andes, while the tree-lined avenues around its slopes are good for walking or jogging.