Chile’s dazzling landscapes - fjords and deserts, rainforests and mountains, ice fields and steppe - tend to overshadow its urban areas, which many travellers treat merely as stopovers or transport interchanges. But if you dedicate some time to exploring the capital, Santiago, and the nearby port of Valparaíso, you’ll discover two of the most engaging and storied cities in South America. Above all, they allow you to immerse yourself in Chile’s often tumultuous history
In a central valley flanked by tumbling hills and Andean peaks, Santiago is a cultural, political and economic powerhouse, home to almost 7 million people, more than a third of the country’s population. Founded by Spanish conquistadors in 1541 in an area that had been inhabited by Indigenous communities for millennia, it quickly became
