Santiago Facts

Today, Santiago is a city that occupies the fertile central valley of Chile between the Andes and the coast, with the Mapocho River crossing the city from east to west. The most remarkable thing about Santiago, with its five million inhabitants, is perhaps its diversity. It is a city with many faces, great and varied changes, and a social and political landscape that sometimes takes us back to the colonial city it once was.

Almost 500 years after Pedro de Valdivia traced around the Plaza de Armas the 35 blocks that would compose the city in 1541, Santiago is now an extensive urban environment with skyscrapers and modern telecommunications networks. However, you need to explore it in order...

..., one of South America's most sophisticated cities, is a thriving metropolis that's home to a third of Chile's entire population, and it is the civic, cultural, and historical nucleus of the country. In spite of this, Santiago is one of Chile's least-popular tourist destinations, and most visitors use the city only as a jumping-off point to locations such as Patagonia or the Lake District, or as a base while exploring the central region.

You won't find a rich, vibrant culture in Santiago that defines cities like Río de Janeiro or Buenos Aires, or an endless list of things to do and see, either. Yet as the city booms economically and memories of the stifling Pinochet dictatorship fade, Santiago...