Qualla: Santa Lucía Hill https://qualla.com/santa-lucia-hill 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/j/c/santa-lucia-hill-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Santa Lucía Hill https://qualla.com/santa-lucia-hill Santa Lucía Hill: Introduction https://qualla.com/santa-lucia-hill/ Photo credit Felipe Restrepo Acosta, CC BY-SA 4.0. The hard knob of rock at the center of Santiago is the worn-down core of a volcano that last lived 15 million years ago. The Mapuche named it Huelén. The Spanish renamed it Santa Lucía, after the saint's day on which Pedro de Valdivia took the hill, December 13, 1540, and from this small rocky perch he laid out the city of Santiago the following year. Everything below the hill, the avenues and plazas and millions of lives, radiates outward from this ancient volcanic stub where the whole story began.

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Image: Felipe Restrepo Acosta | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/c/santa-lucia-hill-wp/66jc-santa-luc-a-hill-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Santa Lucía Hill: The Hill Where Santiago Began https://qualla.com/santa-lucia-hill/ Photo credit Mcemiaj, CC BY-SA 3.0. Valdivia's expedition recognized what the indigenous inhabitants had long known: a defensible high point in a wide valley is worth claiming. The hill's earliest colonial use was as a place of worship and prayer, particularly during a chicken pox outbreak in 1541 that struck the f...

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Image: Mcemiaj | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/c/santa-lucia-hill-wp/66jc-santa-luc-a-hill-the-hill-where-santiago-began.mp3 0:06 2 full Santa Lucía Hill: The Cemetery for the Disowned https://qualla.com/santa-lucia-hill/ Photo credit Pepoideas, CC BY-SA 3.0. The hill also holds a more sorrowful history. One hillside once served as a cemetery for the dissidents, the burial place for people denied a grave in consecrated ground because they did not follow the official Roman Catholic faith. Protestants, freethinkers, and others judged un...

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Image: Pepoideas | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/c/santa-lucia-hill-wp/66jc-santa-luc-a-hill-the-cemetery-for-the-disowned.mp3 0:06 3 full Santa Lucía Hill: A Mayor's Obsession https://qualla.com/santa-lucia-hill/ Photo credit Linkey, CC BY-SA 2.5. For most of its history the hill was a bare, rough outcrop. Then in 1872 Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, Santiago's restless intendant, made it his mission to transform the eyesore into a garden. He drove a road across the hill, built a gas-lit chapel at the top, and laid out the fount...

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Image: Linkey | CC BY-SA 2.5

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/c/santa-lucia-hill-wp/66jc-santa-luc-a-hill-a-mayors-obsession.mp3 0:06 4 full Santa Lucía Hill: Stars, Fountains, and a View https://qualla.com/santa-lucia-hill/ Photo credit Marcelo Ois Lagarde, CC BY-SA 3.0. Briefly the hill was also a window on the universe. In 1849 the American naval officer James Melville Gilliss led an astronomical expedition to Chile to measure the solar parallax, setting up an observatory on Santa Lucía. When the expedition ended in 1852, its instruments were s...

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Image: Marcelo Ois Lagarde | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/c/santa-lucia-hill-wp/66jc-santa-luc-a-hill-stars-fountains-and-a-view.mp3 0:06 5 full