4 countries and a frozen continent, 2025: Day 9. Santiago. 25.1.25

"HALF DAY SANTIAGO PANORAMIC CITY TOUR. Exploring both the old and new areas of the city. Highlights include the Plaza de Armas, the central square and the heart of the city’s colonial core. The Plaza de Armas features the beautiful 18th-century Metropolitan Cathedral, the Royal Court Palace from the early 19th century (housing the Natural History Museum), and the Central Post Office completed in 1882. Next, venture to Cerro Santa Lucia, the hill where Santiago was founded in 1541. Now transformed into a park with fountains, stairs leading to a fort, and a panoramic viewpoint across the city, it offers a captivating experience."

Our room comes with breakfast which was an array of cereals, breads, pastries and a hot variety including bacon and eggs.

Our guide met us at 9am and we were driven up to the top of Santa Lucia and we wandered around the hill slowly winding down on foot to explore the town. We walked about 4kms.

This was an elevator to bring people to the top of the hill but is no longer in use.

Neptune Terrace, fountain built circa 1900.

National library.

A tribute to a fire-fighter who lost his life.⬆️ They also named the street after him. All Chilean fire fighters are volunteers and actually pay a fee for the privilege.

Mayor of Santiago, Patricio Mekis, in the 1970s.

Opera house.

As time ticks down the walking man gets faster until it becomes a run.

Plaza de Armos, originally set up by the Incas.

The equestrian statue of Pedro de Valdivia , located in the Plaza de Armas is a bronze sculpture depicting the conquistador Pedro de Valdivia. A work by the sculptor Enrique Pérez , it was inaugurated on July 25, 1963 The statue was made in 1960 at a cost of 30 thousand escudos as a donation from the Spanish community residing in Chile for the 150 years of Chilean independence, being made with bronze from war cannons from Spanish ships.

Information centre.

The Palacio de la Real Audiencia de Santiago is a building located in the north central village of the Plaza de Armas in Santiago, Chile. The building dates back to 1808 and houses, since 1982, the National History Museum of Chile.

Central Post Office. A 19th-century Renaissance-style building features ornate exteriors and elegant interiors crowned by a glass-covered roof that fills the space with natural light.

Cathedral of the Archbishop.

Google translation.

The Palacio de los Tribunales de Justicia de Santiago (English: Courts of Justice Palace of Santiago) houses the Supreme Court of Chile, the Court of Appeals of Santiago, and the Court-martial Court of the Chilean Army, Chilean Air Force and Carabineros de Chile(police). It occupies a full block-front of Compañía Street.

Presidential Palace.

Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens was a Chilean socialist politician who served as the 28th president of Chile from 1970 until his death in 1973. As a socialist committed to democracy, he has been described as the first Marxist to be elected president in a liberal democracy in Latin America...Wikipedia

Underground Metro Station.

Mural depicting the brutal wars

This one depicts peace

A very interesting story for this church.

"The San Francisco Church (Spanish: Iglesia de San Francisco) is a Franciscan church in the downtown of Santiago de Chile. The church, along with the adjacent convent, is one of the oldest colonial-era buildings in the country. It has been resistant to about 15 earthquakes of magnitude over 7."

" The church was consecrated in 1622. The first bell tower was destroyed by an earthquake in 1647 and its collapse caused damage in a part of the choir. The rest of the building successfully resisted it. In 1730 another earthquake badly damaged the rebuilt tower, which was demolished in 1751. The current bell tower is of Victorian architecture and was constructed in the mid-1800s."

"The foundations of the original San Francisco church are dissimilar from most colonial buildings in Santiago. Their structure starts 10 cm below floor level –where the 1.7 m thick stone wall ends– and is made of cobblestone, contained laterally by two megalithic stone axes. They are submerged in loose soil and sand; that is, they are not bounded by mortar and, therefore, they have no rigidity. This means that the thick wall simply rests on a sort of mobile support. The lateral axes are composed of large semi-shaped stone blocks about 60 × 60 × 60 cm, parallel to the foundations and detached 20 cm from the wall, with a larger stone (90 × 60 × 60 cm) located at the corner of the transept. At the junction between the large blocks are small cobblestones and wedgeshaped stones, presumably to keep together the ensemble, transforming the axis into an immovable lateral retaining wall. This means the foundations form a ‘seismic isolator’ where the cobblestones can move freely during an earthquake without neither crumbling nor losing their geometry as they are contained on both sides. This system partially isolates the structure from ground movements, reducing the horizontal effort that could affect the building. In all likelihood this foundation system is the same throughout the church, but given the limitations of the excavated surface this idea will remain a hypothesis."

Google translation ↕️

Partial Google translation ↕️

"This pocket-sized neighborhood developed on the grounds of the Franciscan convent of Iglesia de San Francisco is made up of two intersecting cobblestone streets, París and Londres, which are lined by graceful European-style town houses built in the 1920s. Look for the memorial at Londres 38, a building that served as a torture center during Augusto Pinochet's government."