La Sebastiana

Pablo Neruda's eccentric hilltop house, now a museum with views over the entire bay

La Sebastiana is the most characterful of Pablo Neruda's three Chilean houses (the others are La Chascona in Santiago and La Isla Negra). Perched on Cerro Florida with panoramic views over Valparaíso's bay, the narrow five-storey house is filled with Neruda's obsessive collections: figureheads, maps, coloured bottles, clocks, birds, ships in bottles, and a carousel horse he found in Paris and shipped home. The rooms are small and eccentric, stacked vertically like a tower, and the top floor gives an extraordinary view over the bay.

The house is managed by the Fundación Pablo Neruda and open to the public; audio guides are available in several languages. Allow at least an hour and a half. The walk up to La Sebastiana from the flat city centre is steep; taxis or the neighbourhood's winding streets are the practical options. Visiting in the morning gives the best light on the bay view.

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A story
Neruda named the house La Sebastiana after the Spaniard Sebastián Collado, who began building it and then abandoned it halfway through. Neruda bought the unfinished shell in the 1950s and completed it to his own fantastical specifications — a narrow five-storey tower with a taxidermied horse, a rocking horse bar, and a ship's wheel on the top floor. He described the view from the top as seeing "everything, from the windows of my house." On the day he died, September 23, 1973 — twelve days after Pinochet's coup — this house was ransacked.