The Museo a Cielo Abierto (Open-Air Museum) in the San Miguel commune is a remarkable collection of over 40 large-scale murals painted on the retaining walls of the Zanjón de la Aguada — a concrete drainage channel that cuts through the neighbourhood. The murals cover the full spectrum of Chilean contemporary art, from abstract pieces to politically charged figurative work, and are considered the largest street art collective in Chile.
The murals were begun in 1989, during the final years of the Pinochet dictatorship, and the project has continued for decades. Getting there requires a taxi or bus to San Miguel; the murals run along the channel walls for several kilometres. It is not a polished tourist attraction — there are no visitor facilities and the neighbourhood is working-class — but the quality and scale of the artwork is genuinely impressive and the setting makes it more powerful than gallery equivalents.