Parque Forestal

This guide to Parque Forestal in Santiago starts with engineer Ernesto Ansart's 1873 plan to pen in the flood-prone Mapocho River, drawn up for the city and mining magnate Luis Cousiño. It follows the nearly two decades the channel took to finish, and how French landscape architect Georges Dubois then shaped the newly dry riverside ground into avenues of oaks, planes and palms leading toward the future Fine Arts Museum. You're walking the same stretch that was once open riverbed.