Teja Island, connected to central Valdivia by a short bridge, holds the main campus of the Austral University of Chile and several of the city's museums. The best of these are run by the university and clustered along the riverside: the Museo Histórico y Antropológico Maurice van de Maele covers the history and culture of the Los Ríos region from pre-Columbian Mapuche civilization through Spanish colonization to the German immigration period; the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC) occupies the ruins of a historic brewery and shows Chilean and Latin American contemporary art.
The anthropology museum is particularly worthwhile — it holds one of the best collections of Mapuche silver jewelry and ritual objects in southern Chile, and its exhibition on the German immigration of the 19th century illuminates the background to Valdivia's distinctive culture. The MAC is smaller and less consistent in quality, but the building is worth seeing. Both museums face the Valdivia River; the walk from one to the other along the island's waterfront, with the river on one side and the university's forested grounds on the other, takes about fifteen minutes and is pleasant.