Museum of National History of Chile

This guide to the Museum of National History of Chile follows the courthouse Juan José de Goycolea raised on Santiago's main square in 1804, after earthquakes in 1647 and 1730 had already flattened two earlier courts on the same ground. It traces the building's turn from Spanish royal court to the seat of Chile's first government in 1810, and its later decades as government offices and a post office before it reopened as a history museum in 1982. Its rooms today hold colonial furniture and independence-era uniforms from those centuries.