News
History, literature and cosmic phenomena in the Coquimbo Region
29-03-2019
A diverse region in activities to know and understand more Chilean culture, Coquimbo surprise its visitors with wonderful places to take a walk and soak up its art and history is why we have chosen 6 museums that can visit during the Atacama Immersion experience .
1. Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory
Perhaps it is the most famous of the observatories located in Chile. It was inaugurated in 1967, has 8 telescopes and a radio telescope. The size of its mirrors varies from 61 cm. the smallest to 4.5 meters, with them look at the clear sky of the region is quite a spectacle.
It employs around 175 people and is open to the public every Saturday, summer and winter, weather permitting. The number of visitors is limited to two groups of 40 people for security reasons. The permits are free and can be obtained at the reception desk in La Serena. The tours are conducted without charge by a professional guide. The time from the departure of the door to the return to the road is approximately 2 hours.
2. House of Gabriela Mistral
In order to support the cultural initiatives of the region, the Cultural Center was founded in 1935 and then the Casa Gabriela Mistral Museum, an outstanding Chilean poet. In it you can see a large library that includes books that belonged to Mistral.
On April 7, 2010 the remodeling of the Museum was inaugurated, which includes the drawing of a diagonal line on the total of the Museum's land, a straight line that connects the place with the tomb of Gabriela Mistral in Montegrande. The collection is housed in the rooms of the Museum, whose museography is thematically structured in six aspects: Origin and Landscape, America, Legacy Atkinson, Poetry and Work, Public Life and Spirituality.
3. The Mamalluca Observatory
It is located northwest of the city of Vicuña, and has been open to the public since 1998. It has a 12-inch telescope with CCD detectors for electronic photography, as well as computer equipment for data transfer. In addition, a multimedia exhibition room where everything that surrounds us in images is explained in a 1 hour talk. The tour in total, lasts 2 hours where visitors are informed by specialists of the details that can be displayed in the space, they can also see through the telescope, the observation of the stars, the Moon, some planets and the different constellations.
4. Archeological Museum
The Archaeological Museum of La Serena was born as a result of the investigations carried out by don Francisco Cornely Bachman in the 1930s. With the auspices of the First Municipality of La Serena, it was founded on April 3, 1943 by the same researcher, who He dedicated himself to study the Diaguita Culture in the Elqui Valley, and later originated the first collections of the museum. Its façade incorporated a baroque portal, rescued from an old colonial house in the city, belonging to the Count of Villa Señor.
5. Pangue Observatory
It is located on the top of a hill in the vicinity of the Elqui Valley, south of the town of Vicuña, and 80km east of the city of La Serena. The absence of light pollution and climatology make the quality of the sky immeasurable. Therefore, this same place was recently selected, among 5 candidates in the world, to house the future LSST scientific observatory. (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope).
It has fully equipped telescopes available to tourists, amateur and professional astronomers; Different routes are also offered, from a basic one of two hours, to more specialized ones in which the stars are contemplated throughout the night.
6. Gabriel González Videla Museum
And to see the infrastructure is a show sense, a construction that dates from 1892, adobe walls with interior divisions of wooden partitions. The armor of the roof is made of oak and the cover of galvanized iron. It is located in the heart of the city and corresponds to the only civil construction of the nineteenth century existing around the Plaza de Armas. in the same place as the site of the refounder of La Serena, Francisco de Aguirre. Its architecture is eclectic in style; between the years 1927 and 1973 it was property and family residence of Gabriel González Videla, President of Chile from 1946 to 1952. In 1977 it was acquired by the State and transferred to the Municipality of la Serena, its current owner. It was declared a National Monument in 1981.
The house of González Videla is an example of the architectural wealth that was in the city of La Serena in the second half of the nineteenth century.
