Santiago

A steep funicular hauls you 300 metres above the city to a white Virgin Mary statue with a panorama stretching from the Andes to the coastal range on clear winter days.

Pablo Neruda's whimsical Bellavista home is built on multiple levels like a ship run aground in a hillside garden, stuffed with his collections of ships in bottles and coloured glass.

A meticulously curated colonial customs house holds one of Latin America's finest collections of pre-Columbian textiles, ceramics, and gold work from across the continent.

Chile's neoclassical presidential palace, bombed in the 1973 coup and later rebuilt, anchors the civic plaza and opens its courtyards to the public for free daily.

Santiago's vast wholesale produce market is where chefs and home cooks jostle at dawn among pyramids of merkén peppers, Chilean winter squash, and sacks of dried mote corn.

Santiago's oldest surviving working-class neighbourhood retains early 20th-century architecture, independent bookshops, and a Sunday flea market at Plaza Yungay that locals treat as a living room.

This small urban hill in Recoleta is almost always empty of tourists yet delivers unobstructed views over the city cemetery's ornate mausoleums and the northern barrios beyond.

A sober, architecturally striking building in Barrio Brasil houses an unflinching documentary record of the Pinochet dictatorship through personal testimonies, photographs, and artefacts.

The Santiago outpost of this Nikkei concept delivers elegantly plated Peruvian-Japanese ceviches and tiraditos in a sleek Las Condes setting popular with the city's business and design crowd.

Chef Carolina Bazán's intimate Barrio Italia restaurant earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand for its seasonal Chilean market cooking served at marble counters with natural wines from the Maule Valley.

Chef Rodolfo Guzmán's internationally acclaimed restaurant serves a long tasting menu built entirely around foraged Chilean endemic ingredients, changing with each micro-season of Patagonia and the Atacama.

One of Chile's pioneering craft breweries pours its flagship Kross 5 and rotating seasonal ales directly from the tank in a converted industrial space in Barrio Italia.

A beloved Providencia institution with dark wood booths, long shared tables, and waiters who have been slinging terremoto cocktails and cold Escudo for decades without irony.

This self-declared 'República Independiente del Pisco' in Lastarria stocks over a hundred piscos from both Chile and Peru and serves them in flights with serious tasting notes.

Named after the famous left-leaning satirical magazine, this Bellavista bar has political cartoons on the walls, cheap craft beer on tap, and a loyal crowd of journalists and university students.

One of Santiago's most enduring alternative clubs, Blondie in Barrio Brasil plays new wave, post-punk, and indie across two floors for a crowd that arrives dressed accordingly and stays until dawn.

Tucked in Ñuñoa, this intimate jazz club has operated since 1943 and books both veteran Chilean jazz musicians and visiting international acts across its low-ceilinged brick venue.

A staple of Santiago's LGBTQ+ nightlife in Barrio Italia, Fausto runs raucous drag shows early in the evening before the DJ booth takes over well past 3 a.m.