Qualla: La Serena https://qualla.com/la-serena en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:39:57 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/t/m/la-serena-wk/hero-small.webp Qualla: La Serena https://qualla.com/la-serena La Serena: Introduction https://qualla.com/la-serena/ Photo credit CeciliaPerezI, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walk the center of La Serena and you might assume the whole city has stood unchanged for four hundred years. Stone churches, balconied facades, shaded plazas, all in a single graceful colonial idiom. The truth is stranger and more deliberate: much of what looks centuries old was reshaped in a burst of mid-twentieth-century ambition, when a Chilean president decided his home city should look like the colonial dream of itself. The effect is seamless, and it works. La Serena is the second-oldest city in Chile, perched where the dry north meets the Pacific, and it carries its long history with unusual confidence.

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Image: CeciliaPerezI | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/t/m/la-serena-wk/66tm-la-serena-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full La Serena: Born of Conquest, Twice https://qualla.com/la-serena/ Photo credit Víctor Sáez Barros, CC BY-SA 3.0. La Serena was founded in 1544 on the orders of the conquistador Pedro de Valdivia, laid out by his captain Juan Bohón as Villanueva de La Serena. Its purpose was strategic: a coastal waypoint to keep open the sea link between newly founded Santiago and the seat of Spanish power i...

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Image: Víctor Sáez Barros | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/t/m/la-serena-wk/66tm-la-serena-born-of-conquest-twice.mp3 0:06 2 full La Serena: A City Built to Look Old https://qualla.com/la-serena/ Photo credit Rjcastillo, CC BY-SA 4.0. The La Serena that visitors photograph owes its unified look to one man's vision. President Gabriel González Videla, a son of the city, launched the Plan Serena between 1948 and 1952, a sweeping program of investment and redevelopment that gave the city its now-famous neocolonial...

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Image: Rjcastillo | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/t/m/la-serena-wk/66tm-la-serena-a-city-built-to-look-old.mp3 0:06 3 full La Serena: Beaches, Papayas, and Pisco https://qualla.com/la-serena/ Photo credit Arturo Rinaldi Villegas, CC BY-SA 3.0. Summer transforms La Serena. It becomes one of Chile's favorite vacation destinations, drawing crowds to some of the longest beaches in the country, stretches of sand you could walk for the better part of a day. The city is famous for its papayas, grown locally and turned into ju...

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Image: Arturo Rinaldi Villegas | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/t/m/la-serena-wk/66tm-la-serena-beaches-papayas-and-pisco.mp3 0:06 4 full La Serena: Under the Clearest Skies https://qualla.com/la-serena/ Photo credit Sfs90, CC BY 3.0. What draws astronomers to this corner of Chile is the same thing that draws sunseekers: the sky. The Elqui Valley above La Serena has some of the cleanest, driest, most transparent air on Earth, and the region bristles with observatories, several of which open their domes to nigh...

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Image: Sfs90 | CC BY 3.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/t/m/la-serena-wk/66tm-la-serena-under-the-clearest-skies.mp3 0:06 5 full