Santiago Day 5 - Museo Bella Arte and Santa Lucia hill

View down from the top of Santa Lucia hill

If you have been following this blog over the past few days, you will have discovered that few things have gone as we would have anticipated. Add the Museo Bellas Arte to the list. I anticipated a national gallery with a permanent collection of lovely paintings and maybe some sculpture. Instead, we found an unbelievably beautiful shell of a building built in 1910, housing very little. All of the exhibits in this part of the museum are temporary. The main theme of the installations was an examination of the concept of gender identity and how it relates to power and submission. My favourite exhibition was Verónica Büttinghausen: El objeto souvenir de mi cotidiano a series of still lives, any one of which I would have been happy to hang in my own home. 

Down a corridor, we discovered the other part of the museum, known as the Museum of Contemporary art. Another beautiful building, in need of some repair, but housing more permanent exhibits of mostly mid 20th century painting. 

After the museums, we wandered and discovered, not far away, Santa Lucia hill. This is one of 2 hills in Santiago (the other being the one with the funicular). It is the site of a famous battle from 1817. After the steep climb all the way up, one is rewarded with a view of the city and some lovely gardens. While we were up there, they fired a cannon, which surprised not just us, but all of the visitors. 

My time in Santiago is up. I board my plane back home in just a few minutes. It has felt like a visit to Europe, but instead of flying east, I flew south.