Friday, 27 september 2024
Santiago’s metro served us well today. It’s not hugely extensive like those in Paris or London, but the stations we visited were clean, well-signed, and artistically decorated in some instances. We never waited more than two minutes for a train. Though it was fairly crowded, people were polite. (Except for the person who stole my phone, but that’s enough about that.)
Our destination was the Plaza de Armas, the center of Santiago since the city was founded in 1521.
The plaza is a large square full of trees and commemorative staues — the usual heroes on horseback and religious figures on whose heads pigeons like to sit — plus this memorial to indigenous peoples.
Also on the plaza, the Cathedral is huge and Baroque enough that you’d think you were in Europe:
From the outside, I couldn’t resist thinking “Santiago, city of old and new” when I saw this reflection of a corner tower in an adjacent building.
The treat of the day was the Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, which one guide book calls “perhaps Chile’s best museum.” I’m not qualified to confirm that, but we thought it was excellent. For those of us steeped in European/US history, it’s great to see art from 500 to >3000 years ago, produced by people in what is now Chile, Mexico, and Central America.
Here are two ceramic bottles (well, containers for liquids) with beautiful decoration and fun images:
And here are two more, with a strong female orientation. The second photo is hard to read, but try to focus on the ~horizontal animal in front (ignoring the calabash behind her on the left).
Finally, an Inca quipu that just stuns me. Though scholars don’t know exactly what was being recorded in this intricate system of strings and knots, it’s something like a census and/or record of goods exchanged. Objects like this have been unambiguously dated as early as the first millenium CE. It’s a wonder — a whole system of recording and communicating that worked for an empire for a long time, but we don’t know how.
Even if you have no idea of what it is, you have to love the display!
The MHB Foghorn 