50 Fun Facts About Santiago, Chile

Which 300-metre Santiago skyscraper overtook the twin towers of Caracas to become South America's tallest building?

Gran Torre Costanera stands 300 metres over the Sanhattan business district. A public observation deck on its top floors gives 360-degree views of the city.

Which port city, rather than the capital Santiago, has housed Chile's National Congress since the return to democracy?

Valparaíso received a purpose-built Congress in the last years of military rule, which put the country's lawmakers in a different city from the president's office.

Which country did hosts Chile beat 2–0 in the violent 1962 World Cup match nicknamed the Battle of Santiago?

Italy had a player sent off after eight minutes who refused to leave and was dragged from the pitch by policemen. Officers had to step in four times in all.

Which Chilean cocktail, a speciality of old Santiago bars like La Piojera, blends pipeño wine with pineapple ice cream?

Terremoto means earthquake, a name coined after the quake that shook central Chile in 1985. Nobody knows who mixed it first, and several old bars claim the credit.

From which downtown Santiago hill, known as Huelén before the Spanish arrived, is a cannon traditionally fired at noon?

Cerro Santa Lucía got its Spanish name because the city's founder took the hill on the feast day of Saint Lucy in 1540. A single cannon shot still marks midday.

Which Chilean poet built La Chascona, a Santiago house named after his lover's tangled red hair?

Pablo Neruda began the house in 1953 as a hideaway for Matilde Urrutia, then his secret lover and later his third wife. Today it is a museum.

Which Spanish word names the people of Santiago, the city that is home to over a third of all Chileans?

Santiaguinos, or santiaguinas for women, covers people from both the city and its wider region, where more than forty communes have merged into one urban sprawl.

Mote con huesillo, the summer drink sold from Santiago street carts, pairs husked wheat with which dried fruit?

Peaches, dried and known as huesillos, are soaked overnight, simmered with sugar and cinnamon, and served chilled over the cooked wheat.

Which religion's continental temple for South America rises as nine glass sails in the foothills above Santiago?

Bahá'í Faith temples are all nine-sided, so Santiago's has nine entrances, nine paths and nine fountains. Opened in 2016, it was the last continental temple finished.

Which mountain range rises directly east of Santiago, with summits over 6,000 metres just beyond the city?

The Andes wall in the city's east while the lower Chilean Coastal Range closes the valley on the west, forming a bowl that helps hold winter smog over the capital.

Which Spanish conquistador, later the first governor of colonial Chile, founded the city of Santiago in February 1541?

Pedro de Valdivia camped by the river for two months before founding the city, then handed the street plan to master builder Pedro de Gamboa, who drew a grid.

Santiago, the capital of Chile, takes its name from which apostle, the patron saint of Spain?

Saint James is Santiago in Spanish, a running-together of Sant Iago, from the Latin Sanctus Iacobus. The Spanish names Jaime and Jacobo grew from the same root.

Which river runs about 110 km from the mountains and straight through the middle of Santiago in a concrete channel?

Mapocho River bridges number 40 in the capital, 21 of them over the walled channel. The name is usually traced to Mapudungun words for water that enters the land.

Which president died inside Santiago's presidential palace during the military coup of 11 September 1973?

Salvador Allende made a farewell speech on live radio with gunfire audible behind him, vowing not to resign, and died in his office later that day.

Which nation beat Czechoslovakia 3–1 at Santiago's Estadio Nacional to win the 1962 FIFA World Cup?

Brazil fell a goal behind after 15 minutes yet still won, and did it without Pelé, who had been injured in the team's second match of the tournament.

Which Santiago football club became the first Chilean team to win the Copa Libertadores?

Colo-Colo, named after a Mapuche chieftain, took the trophy in 1991 by beating Olimpia 3–0 at its own Estadio Monumental, 18 years after losing its first final.

Which Santiago hill, climbed by a funicular since 1925, is crowned by a 14-metre statue of the Virgin Mary?

Cerro San Cristóbal was known as Tupahue before the Spanish came. Its summit sanctuary now shares the slopes with the national zoo and a cable car.

Which US music festival added a yearly Santiago edition in 2011, its first spin-off abroad?

Lollapalooza drew about 100,000 people to its first Santiago edition, which founder Perry Farrell had announced as the festival's twentieth outing.

Chile won its first Copa América title in Santiago in 2015 by beating which country on penalties?

Argentina, with Lionel Messi in the side, was held to a goalless draw before Alexis Sánchez scored the winning kick of a 4–1 shootout.

Which Spanish conquistadora is credited with saving newly founded Santiago when it was attacked and burned in 1541?

Inés de Suárez was the only European woman on the expedition that founded the city. On the desert march south she had nursed the wounded and found water for the column.

Which chief led the coalition of warriors that destroyed the young city of Santiago on 11 September 1541?

Michimalonco ruled the valleys around the city as an independent chief. The lonco in his name is the Mapudungun word for head or chief.

Which Rome-born architect arrived in 1780 to work on Santiago's cathedral and went on to reshape the colonial city?

Joaquín Toesca had worked under the architect Sabatini in Madrid. In Chile he also designed the levees that shielded the city from river floods.

Santiago's main avenue, popularly called the Alameda, is officially named after which independence leader?

Bernardo O'Higgins had the avenue laid out himself, turning a dried-up arm of the river that had served as a rubbish dump into a tree-lined promenade.

Which 1818 battle, fought on the plains outside Santiago, sealed the independence of Chile's heartland from Spain?

The Battle of Maipú was won by patriot forces under José de San Martín, who destroyed a royalist army that had been advancing on the capital.

Which region of Spain, the homeland of Santiago's founder, was honoured in the long original name he gave the city?

Extremadura named the whole colony too: the city was founded as Santiago del Nuevo Extremo, capital of a governorship called Nueva Extremadura.

Before the Spanish came, the farming villages of Santiago's valley had fallen under which empire based in Peru?

The Inca Empire held the valley from the late 15th century, planting a colony of settlers where the city centre now stands and using it as a base for failed pushes south.

From which Peruvian city did Santiago's founder set out in 1540 on an eleven-month march through the Atacama Desert?

Cusco was the starting point of an expedition that marched with Pizarro's permission. It chose the desert to avoid a mountain road that had ruined an earlier army.

Santiago's Museum of Memory and Human Rights commemorates victims of the 1973–1990 dictatorship led by which general?

Augusto Pinochet's regime is documented there through prisoners' letters and survivor testimony. Michelle Bachelet, herself a torture victim, opened the museum in 2010.

Which historian, appointed mayor of Santiago in 1872, transformed a rocky downtown hill into a landscaped park?

Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna also began a ring road around the whole city and remade the Alameda into its main thoroughfare. A major avenue now carries his name.

Which colonial church, the oldest in Santiago, has withstood around 15 earthquakes stronger than magnitude 7?

San Francisco Church lost its first bell tower to the earthquake of 1647. The tower seen today is a Victorian-style replacement from the mid-1800s.

Which Santiago square, the heart of the founder's 1541 street grid, is faced by the cathedral and main post office?

Plaza de Armas is also faced by the former palace of the Real Audiencia, the colonial high court, which now houses the National History Museum.

Which poet, Latin America's first Nobel laureate in literature, gives her name to a major Santiago cultural centre?

Gabriela Mistral's name went in 2010 on a complex first put up in only 275 days, with the help of several thousand volunteers, to host a 1972 trade conference.

Which folk singer, killed there after the 1973 coup, gives his name to the Santiago arena once called Estadio Chile?

Víctor Jara was one of thousands of detainees held in the indoor arena in the months after the coup. It was renamed in his memory in 2003.

Which Venezuelan-born scholar, first rector of Santiago's oldest university, appears on Chile's 20,000-peso note?

Andrés Bello drew up the project that became the 1842 law creating the University of Chile, which is still nicknamed the Casa de Bello after him.

Santiago's Museum of Fine Arts, opened for the 1910 centennial, copies the layout and façade of which French palace?

The Petit Palais look was chosen for the new home of a museum founded in 1880, which makes it the oldest art museum in South America.

Which Santiago neighbourhood, once part of La Chimba north of the river, is known for street art, bars and nightclubs?

Bellavista straddles two communes along Pío Nono Street, and grew from an outlying district into a mixed residential and cultural quarter.

Which Santiago market, opened in 1872, trades beneath a cast-iron roof fabricated by a firm in Glasgow?

Mercado Central owes its ironwork to the Scottish firm R Laidlaw & Sons, while Chilean builder Fermín Vivaceta took charge of putting the hall up.

Which wine company, founded in 1883 on an estate at Pirque outside Santiago, makes Casillero del Diablo?

Concha y Toro was started by a former Chilean finance minister and his wife, who planted their vineyard with grape varieties imported from Bordeaux.

Santiago twice gave up hosting rights, for 1975 and 1987, before finally staging which multi-sport event in 2023?

The Pan American Games had never been held in Chile before. The earlier withdrawals were put down to financial and political problems.

Santiago's earthquakes are driven by which oceanic plate, named after a region of Peru, sliding beneath South America?

The Nazca Plate dives under the continent along the Peru–Chile Trench, the same slow collision that pushed up the mountains east of the city.

Which atmospheric effect traps smog over Santiago's enclosed valley during the cold winter months?

Thermal inversion leaves a layer of warmer air sitting like a lid above the cold valley floor, so fumes stay concentrated between the mountain ranges.

Which climate pattern, shared with coastal California, gives Santiago warm dry summers and cool rainy winters?

Mediterranean-style seasons mean about 80% of the yearly rain at the airport falls between May and September, while summer months average under 4 mm.

Which ski resort 46 km from Santiago was founded in 1988 by French entrepreneurs inspired by Les Arcs?

Valle Nevado has around 900 hectares of skiing and its own lodging, built as a French-Chilean project on the model of European purpose-built resorts.

Santiago's Metro runs rubber-tyred trains, with early models based on the rolling stock of which European capital?

Paris provided the pattern for two generations of Santiago trains, and the NS in each rubber-tyred model's code stands for Neumático Santiago.

Santiago's licensed street taxis are painted black with orange number plates and a roof of which colour?

Yellow roofs mark the regular street cabs. Radiotaxis booked by phone can be any make or colour, but they must still carry the orange plates.

Which world body's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean is headquartered in Santiago?

The United Nations created it in 1948, and it is better known across the region by its Spanish initials, CEPAL.

Santiago's devastating earthquake of 1647 is the setting of a famous 1807 short story by which German writer?

Heinrich von Kleist follows two lovers caught up in the chaos. The real disaster was followed by weeks of typhus that killed an estimated 2,000 more people.

Which pope rode Santiago's hillside funicular to the summit sanctuary during his only visit to Chile in 1987?

John Paul II took the 485-metre incline railway to the top, and on the same trip greeted crowds from a balcony of the presidential palace.

A frozen 500-year-old boy mummy, found in 1954, came from which mountain that looms over Santiago's skyline?

Cerro El Plomo is the highest peak visible from the city's streets. The boy, left there as a sacrifice in the late 15th century, is kept at the Natural History Museum.

Santiago's main airport opened in 1967 under the name of which western commune, where its runways lie?

Pudahuel comes from Mapudungun, read as place of pools or place where seagulls gather. The terminal stands about 15 km from the city centre.