Cementerio General de Santiago

The Cementerio General is Chile's most important cemetery and one of the largest in South America, covering nearly 85 hectares north of the city centre. It holds over two million burials and reads as a complete history of Chilean society — from the grandest neoclassical mausoleums of the 19th-century oligarchy to the simple graves of ordinary families. Salvador Allende, Pablo Neruda, Violeta Parra, and many other defining figures of Chilean culture and politics are buried here.

The cemetery has been open to visitors since its founding in 1821 and is treated as a public park as well as a burial ground. The main avenues are lined with funeral monuments of extraordinary ambition and variety: Egyptian obelisks, Greek temples, art nouveau angels, modernist concrete slabs. It is both moving and architecturally fascinating. Pick up a map at the entrance to find the graves of notable figures. Open daily.

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The Cementerio General holds the remains of virtually every significant figure in Chilean history, including Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda. During the Pinochet years it was also used as a clandestine burial site; families of the disappeared came here searching for relatives. A memorial wall inside the cemetery lists the names of victims of the dictatorship who were disappeared or killed. The cemetery is also a significant architectural collection — the wealthy families of 19th-century Santiago competed to build the most elaborate mausoleums.

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