Providencia is the sort of place you want to live. Everyone agrees…and so it costs. Just to the north of the Río Mapocho on some narrow tree lined side lane off Calle Pio Nono, close to just about everything including the trendy Patio Bellavista, the Zoo, Plaza Itialia and one of Pablo Neruda’s houses – La Chascona.
La Chascona is a unique house, and embodies one of Pablo Neruda’s passions: ships. The house was created in the image of a ship – indeed some parts of it were salvaged from ships although Neruda himself only ever travelled once in a ship, a rather unglamorous fishing boat they say. Either way, the house is unique and one of three in the Chile: La Sebastiana, located in nearby Valparaíso and Casa Museo Isla Negra to the south of Valparaíso. Isla Negra is the name of a town, not an island. La chascona sits at the base of cerro San Cristobal and was fed by a spring from that hill which enabled water to play a part in the ambience and theme of the house.
The houses are all maintained and run by the Fundación Pablo Neruda as museums, showcasing one quirky and very individual aspect of one of Chile’s greatest writers. This year it will be 40 years since Neruda’s death, only a month or so before Chile entered it’s most difficult and darkest period in it’s history. I would like to visit all three houses before I leave.