The house museum of President Gabriel González Videla (1946–1952) occupies a colonial mansion on the corner of the Plaza de Armas. Two floors of personal effects, presidential furniture, gifts of state, and a gallery of regional painting on the upper level.
González Videla is the figure who shaped modern La Serena — and a controversial one. He outlawed the Communist Party that had brought him to power, hunted down its members (including the poet Pablo Neruda, who went into exile), and lavished public funds on his birth city. The museum is mostly admiring; the politics are easier to read into the displays than out of them.