In the desert-like north of Chile there are archaeological sites of the pre-Columbian Chinchorro culture (around 6000 to 2000 BC). Already 3000 years before the Egyptians this used mummification in the funeral. In the 16th century, the Spaniards conquered the area, destroyed the Inca Empire and also shaped the country culturally. Elements of the Inca culture have been preserved in the north in folk music and dance as well as in customs and handicrafts. The architecture of the colonial era is still visible today in churches, houses and the chessboard-like floor plans of old cities.

Easter Island, which has belonged to Chile since 1888 according to neovideogames, occupies a special position. The culture of the Rapa-Nui left about a thousand mysterious stone sculptures there: up to 10 m high figures (“Moai”) made of tuff stone, facing the sea.

In 1945 the first Latin American Nobel Prize for Literature went to the Chilean poet G. Mistral . This award was also given in 1971 to Fr Neruda , who became the most popular lyric poet of the subcontinent with his politically committed poems. Not all of the authors who went into exile after the 1973 military coup returned in the mid-1980s. Some, like the bestselling author I. Allende (” Das Geisterhaus “, 1982), stayed abroad. The setting of world literature are the Juan Fernández Islandsin the Pacific, which belong to Chile. The Scottish seaman A. Selkirk stayed there from 1704-09, whose fate D. Defoe wrote about the novel » Robinson Crusoe ”(1719). The music genre »Nueva Canción Chilena« (Spanish: »New Chilean Song«) is widespread. She combines traditional Ibero-American folklore with modern instruments and socially critical texts. The founder of the style was the singer-songwriter Violeta Parra (* 1917, † 1967), well-known is the band Inti-Illimani.

The renowned documentary filmmaker Patricio Gúzman (* 1941) made an outstanding contribution to coping with Chilean history in film art. In »Der Perlmuttknopf« (2015) he describes the fate of the indigenous population under the Pinochet dictatorship. It is the second part of his film trilogy, which began in 2010 with “Nostalgia of Light”. The pianist C. Arrau became internationally famous with his outstanding interpretations of classical and romantic piano music (Beethoven , Schubert , Liszt , Brahms ). The most popular sports are soccer and the Chilean rodeo.

World Heritage Sites in Chile

World Heritage Sites

• Rapa Nui National Park on Easter Island (1995)
• Wooden churches on Chiloé (2000)
• Historic district of Valparaíso (2003)
• Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works (2005)
• Sewell copper mining town (2006)
• Great Inca Road »Qhapaq Ñan« in the Andes (2014)

Sewell copper mining town (World Heritage)

The copper mining town in the Andes was laid out in 1905 for the miners of El Teniente, the world’s largest underground copper mine. It is a testimony to the industrialization of Chile at the beginning of the 20th century. In the 1960s the city lost its importance, today it is deserted.

Copper mining town of Sewell: facts

Official title:	Sewell copper mining town
Cultural monument:	Mining settlement built in the Andes in central Chile in 1905, abandoned since the 1970s; At an altitude of 2,000 m for approx. 15,000 miners, a workers’ town designed for copper mining (still operated there today) in the largest underground copper mine in the world, El Teniente; established by the US group Braden Copper Company, named after its first president (Barton Sewell); American timber frame houses in red, green, blue, and yellow as dwellings, equipped with copper roofs and six-bed rooms; extensive infrastructure with hospital, catholic church, cinema, theater, school; extensive staircase system (“city of stairs”) because of the inaccessible hillside location
Continent:	America
Country:	Chile
Location:	Machiali, province of Cachapoal (central Chile), approx. 100 km southeast of Santiago
Appointment:	2006
Meaning:	Outstanding example of an artificially constructed working and living environment in a climatically and topographically difficult environment; impressive testimony to the special living conditions and consequences of the industrial extraction of raw materials; exceptional example of extensive industrial use of local labor with imported infrastructure

Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works (World Heritage)

In the Atacama Desert, an important saltpetre industry with around 200 plants emerged from 1880. At the beginning of the 1930s, the saltpetre market collapsed with the introduction of artificially extracted saltpetre. Many of the works from that time and their adjoining settlements have been preserved; they are evidence of the industrial history of Chile. They have been on the red list since 2005.

Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works: Facts

Official title:	Humberstone and Santa Laura saltpeter works
Cultural monument:	Over 200 former saltpetre factories in northern Chile with homes for workers from Chile, Peru and Bolivia for over 60 years (since 1880); Place of communal life with own culture and language; once the world’s largest production site for the saltpetre industry; Classified as World Heritage in Danger due to the consequences of an earthquake in 2005
Continent:	America
Country:	Chile
Location:	Atacama Desert, Northern Chile
Appointment:	2005
Meaning:	Exceptional testimony to the industrial history as well as the cultural and social change in Chile at the end of the 19th century.