Market
Santiago Central Market
San Pablo, Santiago, Región Metropolitana
Cast-iron nineteenth-century market hall shipped from Scotland, still run cooperatively by its own vendors.
This guide to Santiago Central Market follows the 1864 fire that destroyed the old wooden Plaza del Abasto, and the decision to replace it with an iron structure cast in Glasgow and shipped across the world to a former garbage dump. It traces engineers Edward Woods and Charles Henry Driver's design, and architect Fermín Vivaceta bolting the numbered iron pieces together without a single weld, up through the market's 1872 opening, when the president himself cut the ribbon.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.