Why go
Read the central square as a planned colonial space, while remembering that the valley was already inhabited. The contrast between the surviving street grid and the much older Indigenous and Inca history adds depth to an otherwise familiar walk through central Santiago.
The full story
Agricultural communities lived along the Mapocho before the Spanish arrived. The valley also lay within the southern reach of the Inca world; the legacy account names Huaca de Chena and Cerro El Plomo as traces of that period. This earlier landscape matters when looking at the Spanish grid: the foundation did not create settlement from empty ground. Pedro de Valdivia founded Santiago del Nuevo Extremo on 12 February 1541 near Huelén, the hill later called Santa Lucía. Pedro de Gamboa laid out a grid around a central Plaza Mayor, with plots for the cathedral and the governor’s house. That square survives as Plaza de Armas, still the clearest place to grasp the original plan. In September 1541, forces led by Michimalonco attacked and destroyed the young settlement. It was rebuilt, and the grid remained the framework for the center. Seeing Cerro Santa Lucía and Plaza de Armas together links the founding site with the ordered town that grew beside it.