Santa Lucía Hill

You begin the route where the city began. This crag, some seventy metres above the streets, was the conquistadors' first lookout: from here Pedro de Valdivia surveyed the Mapocho valley before founding Santiago in 1541.

1From bare rock to garden

The Spaniards named it Santa Lucía. For centuries it was a barren heap of rock; during the Spanish Reconquest, around 1816, two gun batteries were built on it that were never used in battle. One of them is today's Castillo Hidalgo.

The great change came between 1872 and 1874, when the intendant Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna turned the hill into a European-style public promenade, with paths, ponds, terraces and thousands of trees. In 1903 the monumental entrance in front of you, the Neptune Terrace, was added.

2Traces of history

If you climb, on the southern slope you will find a monolith carved with a passage from the letter Valdivia wrote to Emperor Charles V in 1545, praising the newly conquered land. Higher up are Castillo Hidalgo and, at the summit, a lookout built around 1940. From there, on a clear day, you can see the city stretching all the way to the Andes.

Since 1825, a cannon fired from the hill announced midday to Santiago. The tradition has known several pauses over its history.

3What to look for

• The Neptune fountain, with its curving staircases and balustrades.
• The battlements of Castillo Hidalgo, peeking out from the trees.
• The Japanese garden, on the eastern slope, opened in 1959.