It’s always nice to visit places outside of the city center and in Santiago de Chile I enjoyed a few hours in El museo a cielo abierto en San Miguel, an area with dozens of murals in the suburbs. The L2 metro took me to Departamental station, from where I walked in the direction of where I thought it would be.
The neighborhood is quite simple, seemingly a working and middle class area, with blocks of red apartments on a grid of streets. I felt out of place, there were only a handful of other people looking at the murals, but I didn’t feel unsafe. I wandered through the blocks and found the murals were painted on the ends of buildings, so they were easy to find. There is over 4000m2 of murals, so who knows if I saw them all. But it was nice to walk through a quiet neighborhood, seeing regular life unfold and enjoy the art.
In 2009 they started with a selection of murals that represent the whole of Chile. There are murals of vendors, folklore, flora and fauna and of course people. It shows scenes of life, (indigenous) culture and history. But the neighborhood also had really beautiful squares and playgrounds and, at the time of year I visited, Christmas decorations! One of the very cool things is that locals were involved in the process of transforming the area and collaborated with the artists in deciding what would be depicted on the walls.
In this case, pictures indeed say more than words
