Founding of Santiago

Santiago, the capital of Chile, was founded by the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia at the foot of the Cerro Huelen, today's Santa Lucia Hill, in the central valley of the country. Valdivia named it Santiago del Nuevo Extremo and laid it out on the regular grid typical of Spanish colonial cities. The young settlement was attacked and burned within months by local indigenous forces led by Michimalonco, and the colonists survived only with difficulty. Over the following centuries it became the seat of the colonial administration and, after independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century, the capital of the republic. Frequent earthquakes have repeatedly forced the city to rebuild.

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