Santiago's central square since the city's founding in 1541, the Plaza de Armas is still the social heart of the historic centre. The cathedral faces the square on the west, the old post office building (now the Museo Histórico Nacional) on the east, and the municipal government buildings on the south. Shoeshine vendors, chess players, and street performers occupy the benches and pathways year-round, and on Sundays the plaza fills with families in their best clothes.
The Museo Histórico Nacional inside the old post office covers Chilean history from pre-Columbian times through the 20th-century dictatorship, and the building itself — a grand neoclassical structure completed in 1882 — is one of the finest on the square. Walk a few blocks north down Paseo Ahumada, Santiago's main pedestrian street, for the full colonial-centre experience.