Top 10 Things to Do in Santiago

Cerro San Cristobal is Santiago's most beloved urban park — a 722-metre hill rising from the Bellavista neighbourhood whose forested slopes contain the city zoo, a Japanese garden, two swimming pools, a Benedictine monastery with a shop selling honey, and the 22-metre Virgin Mary statue at the summit that watches over the entire metropolitan area with outstretched arms. The hill is accessible by funicular, cable car, or hiking trails and its summit terrace offers what is widely considered the finest panoramic view in Santiago — the entire city spread across the Mapocho River valley with the Andes wall of snowy peaks rising immediately behind. On clear winter mornings the Andes view from the summit is absolutely breathtaking.

La Chascona — "The Tangle-Haired Woman" — was Pablo Neruda's Santiago home, built in the 1950s in the Bellavista neighbourhood as a secret refuge for his love affair with Matilde Urrutia, whom the house is named for. The rambling three-storey structure with its ship-inspired curved walls, bar room built to resemble a ship's hull, and garden of coloured glass installations was designed by Neruda himself along with his two other extraordinary houses as a total artwork of autobiography in architecture. Today it is managed by the Neruda Foundation as a museum preserving his Nobel Prize medal, his extraordinary collection of mastheads, maps, and bar glasses, and the emotional record of one of the 20th century's greatest poets.

The Mercado Central de Santiago is Chile's greatest fish and seafood market — a spectacular cast-iron Victorian structure built in 1872 whose ornate wrought-iron roof, designed by the same Maison Eiffel atelier that built the Eiffel Tower, soars over hundreds of stalls and restaurant counters selling every species of Chilean Pacific seafood, from enormous conger eels and centolla king crabs to razor clams, sea urchins, and the pink reineta fish that Chileans prize above all others. The market's central restaurants are famously tourist-targeted, but the peripheral stalls where local fishermen eat at plastic tables serve the same fresh produce at a fraction of the price. The building alone, with its ornamental ironwork columns and clerestory skylights, is one of Santiago's finest heritage structures.

Barrio Lastarria is Santiago's most culturally concentrated neighbourhood — a compact grid of early 20th-century buildings around the Museum of Visual Arts and the Contemporary Art Museum that has become the city's gallery, bookshop, and outdoor cafe district. The Paseo Lastarria pedestrian street and adjacent Parque Forestal create a continuous outdoor living room of art students, musicians, tourists, and old Santiago families who have been meeting at the neighbourhood's cafe terraces since the 1940s. The neighbourhood's antique market on weekends, combined with its density of independent cinemas and theatre venues, makes it the intellectual heart of Santiago's cultural life.

Casablanca Valley is Chile's premier cool-climate wine region, a narrow coastal valley 90 kilometres west of Santiago where Pacific Ocean fog and breezes create growing conditions that produce some of South America's finest Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and Pinot Noir. The valley pioneered Chile's shift from bulk red wine to premium cool-climate white and rosé production in the 1980s when Ignacio Recabarren planted the first experimental vines here and proved the potential of the Pacific influence. Today over 20 wineries offer cellar door visits and vineyard tastings accessible on a half-day drive from Santiago, with several combining stunning terroir landscapes with excellent restaurants.

Valparaiso, two hours west of Santiago on the Pacific coast, is Chile's most visually extraordinary city — a UNESCO World Heritage port of 42 steep hillsides (cerros) covered in an anarchic jumble of corrugated-iron houses painted in hundreds of colours, connected to the flat portside commercial district by 16 surviving funicular ascensores that have been transporting locals since the 1880s. The city's hillside streets are covered in world-class street art, the bohemian Cerro Alegre and Cerro Concepcion neighbourhoods contain some of Chile's best restaurants and boutique hotels, and the port district retains a rougher, working-class character that keeps the city honest. Pablo Neruda's cliffside house La Sebastiana is here and available for tours.

Cerro Santa Lucia is a 69-metre rocky outcrop in the heart of Santiago that Pedro de Valdivia chose as his lookout point when founding the city in 1541 and that was transformed in 1873 by Mayor Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna into one of the most elaborate romantic gardens in South America. The hill is covered with cascading stone terraces, neo-Gothic towers, fountains, balustrades, and belvederes connected by zigzag pathways that make every turn a discovery, and a small castle at the summit provides views across the city centre rarely accessible from ground level. It is Santiago's most beloved city park and one of the most beautiful urban gardens anywhere in Latin America.

The Museum of Memory and Human Rights is one of the most important and emotionally powerful human rights museums in the world — a 2010 building by Brazilian architects Tomas Landsmann and Carlos Dias dedicated to documenting the systematic human rights violations committed by Pinochet's military dictatorship between 1973 and 1990, including the forced disappearance of over 3,000 people and the torture of tens of thousands. The permanent exhibition uses personal testimonies, audiovisual records, documents, and recovered personal effects to create an immersive record of state terror and its long aftermath in Chilean society. The museum's commitment to memory as a prerequisite for democracy has made it a model for truth and reconciliation institutions globally.

Concha y Toro, founded in 1883 in Pirque 30 kilometres south of Santiago, is Latin America's largest wine producer and the world's most powerful wine brand by volume — exporting to 150 countries and producing over 100 million bottles annually including its iconic Casillero del Diablo range and the trophy wine Don Melchor, consistently rated one of South America's greatest Cabernet Sauvignons. The winery's hacienda grounds include century-old cellars where the legendary "Devil's Cellar" story began — founder Melchor de Concha y Toro reportedly spread rumours of a devil guarding his best wines to deter workers from drinking them. The guided tour and tasting, ending in the historic bodega with a glass of Don Melchor, is one of the most rewarding winery visits in the Southern Hemisphere.

Cerro San Cristobal is Santiago's most beloved urban park — a 722-metre hill rising from the Bellavista neighbourhood whose forested slopes contain the city zoo, a Japanese garden, two swimming pools, a Benedictine monastery with a shop selling honey, and the 22-metre Virgin Mary statue at the summit that watches over the entire metropolitan area with outstretched arms. The hill is accessible by funicular, cable car, or hiking trails and its summit terrace offers what is widely considered the finest panoramic view in Santiago — the entire city spread across the Mapocho River valley with the Andes wall of snowy peaks rising immediately behind. On clear winter mornings the Andes view from the summit is absolutely breathtaking.

La Chascona — "The Tangle-Haired Woman" — was Pablo Neruda's Santiago home, built in the 1950s in the Bellavista neighbourhood as a secret refuge for his love affair with Matilde Urrutia, whom the house is named for. The rambling three-storey structure with its ship-inspired curved walls, bar room built to resemble a ship's hull, and garden of coloured glass installations was designed by Neruda himself along with his two other extraordinary houses as a total artwork of autobiography in architecture. Today it is managed by the Neruda Foundation as a museum preserving his Nobel Prize medal, his extraordinary collection of mastheads, maps, and bar glasses, and the emotional record of one of the 20th century's greatest poets.

The Mercado Central de Santiago is Chile's greatest fish and seafood market — a spectacular cast-iron Victorian structure built in 1872 whose ornate wrought-iron roof, designed by the same Maison Eiffel atelier that built the Eiffel Tower, soars over hundreds of stalls and restaurant counters selling every species of Chilean Pacific seafood, from enormous conger eels and centolla king crabs to razor clams, sea urchins, and the pink reineta fish that Chileans prize above all others. The market's central restaurants are famously tourist-targeted, but the peripheral stalls where local fishermen eat at plastic tables serve the same fresh produce at a fraction of the price. The building alone, with its ornamental ironwork columns and clerestory skylights, is one of Santiago's finest heritage structures.

Barrio Lastarria is Santiago's most culturally concentrated neighbourhood — a compact grid of early 20th-century buildings around the Museum of Visual Arts and the Contemporary Art Museum that has become the city's gallery, bookshop, and outdoor cafe district. The Paseo Lastarria pedestrian street and adjacent Parque Forestal create a continuous outdoor living room of art students, musicians, tourists, and old Santiago families who have been meeting at the neighbourhood's cafe terraces since the 1940s. The neighbourhood's antique market on weekends, combined with its density of independent cinemas and theatre venues, makes it the intellectual heart of Santiago's cultural life.

Casablanca Valley is Chile's premier cool-climate wine region, a narrow coastal valley 90 kilometres west of Santiago where Pacific Ocean fog and breezes create growing conditions that produce some of South America's finest Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and Pinot Noir. The valley pioneered Chile's shift from bulk red wine to premium cool-climate white and rosé production in the 1980s when Ignacio Recabarren planted the first experimental vines here and proved the potential of the Pacific influence. Today over 20 wineries offer cellar door visits and vineyard tastings accessible on a half-day drive from Santiago, with several combining stunning terroir landscapes with excellent restaurants.

Valparaiso, two hours west of Santiago on the Pacific coast, is Chile's most visually extraordinary city — a UNESCO World Heritage port of 42 steep hillsides (cerros) covered in an anarchic jumble of corrugated-iron houses painted in hundreds of colours, connected to the flat portside commercial district by 16 surviving funicular ascensores that have been transporting locals since the 1880s. The city's hillside streets are covered in world-class street art, the bohemian Cerro Alegre and Cerro Concepcion neighbourhoods contain some of Chile's best restaurants and boutique hotels, and the port district retains a rougher, working-class character that keeps the city honest. Pablo Neruda's cliffside house La Sebastiana is here and available for tours.

Cerro Santa Lucia is a 69-metre rocky outcrop in the heart of Santiago that Pedro de Valdivia chose as his lookout point when founding the city in 1541 and that was transformed in 1873 by Mayor Benjamin Vicuna Mackenna into one of the most elaborate romantic gardens in South America. The hill is covered with cascading stone terraces, neo-Gothic towers, fountains, balustrades, and belvederes connected by zigzag pathways that make every turn a discovery, and a small castle at the summit provides views across the city centre rarely accessible from ground level. It is Santiago's most beloved city park and one of the most beautiful urban gardens anywhere in Latin America.

The Museum of Memory and Human Rights is one of the most important and emotionally powerful human rights museums in the world — a 2010 building by Brazilian architects Tomas Landsmann and Carlos Dias dedicated to documenting the systematic human rights violations committed by Pinochet's military dictatorship between 1973 and 1990, including the forced disappearance of over 3,000 people and the torture of tens of thousands. The permanent exhibition uses personal testimonies, audiovisual records, documents, and recovered personal effects to create an immersive record of state terror and its long aftermath in Chilean society. The museum's commitment to memory as a prerequisite for democracy has made it a model for truth and reconciliation institutions globally.

Concha y Toro, founded in 1883 in Pirque 30 kilometres south of Santiago, is Latin America's largest wine producer and the world's most powerful wine brand by volume — exporting to 150 countries and producing over 100 million bottles annually including its iconic Casillero del Diablo range and the trophy wine Don Melchor, consistently rated one of South America's greatest Cabernet Sauvignons. The winery's hacienda grounds include century-old cellars where the legendary "Devil's Cellar" story began — founder Melchor de Concha y Toro reportedly spread rumours of a devil guarding his best wines to deter workers from drinking them. The guided tour and tasting, ending in the historic bodega with a glass of Don Melchor, is one of the most rewarding winery visits in the Southern Hemisphere.