Antofagasta

The coast here was disputed between Chile and Bolivia until a boundary treaty in 1866. That year the Chilean prospectors José Santos Ossa and Francisco Puelma obtained a Bolivian concession for the nitrate fields of the Salar del Carmen, inland from the present city, and a settlement called La Chimba grew up on the shore to serve them. Bolivia made it a major port in 1872, and in 1873 a Chilean company, the Compañía de Salitres y Ferrocarril de Antofagasta, won a contract freeing its mining from taxes for 15 years.

When Bolivia imposed a tax of ten cents and then cancelled the company's contract and closed it, Chile occupied the port on 14 February 1879, starting the War of the Pacific. The 1904 Treaty of Peace and Friendship confirmed Chilean sovereignty. Nitrate, silver and then copper made the city: the Antofagasta–Bolivia railway was founded in 1888, the Huanchaca silver smelter worked from 1892 to 1902, and Croatian, British, Spanish, Greek, Chinese and Arab settlers arrived. The British community's clock tower in Plaza Colón dates from 1912, and the modern port was inaugurated in 1943.

The Universidad del Norte, now the Catholic University of the North, was founded in 1956. In October 1973 the military squad known as the Caravan of Death executed prisoners in the city. On 18 June 1991 mudslides from the hills killed 92 people and left about 20,000 homeless, and in 1995 a magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck. Copper wealth has fuelled the growth of the city's skyline, and in 2008 the city elected its first woman mayor.

The nitrate era made Antofagasta a city of immigrants, and it still shows. The British left their clock tower, the city's British and Croatian schools rank among the top hundred in Chile by university entrance scores, and Greek, Spanish, Chinese and Arab families settled alongside them. Every year since 1983, in early November, the Festival de Colectividades Extranjeras, known as Las Colonias, fills three days with the food, music and dance of these communities and of newer arrivals from elsewhere in Latin America.

Religious festivals of the Andean north are part of the calendar too: the city celebrates the Candelaria in February and holds its own La Tirana Chica, with dance troupes, a week or two after the great July feast in the Tarapacá desert. The local poet Andrés Sabella is honoured with a cultural centre, and the city has hosted international film festivals, including a documentary festival, Antofadocs.

Sport has deep roots. Antofagasta was a host city of the 1959 Basketball World Cup, the city's baseball team keeps up a traditional rivalry with Tocopilla, and Deportes Antofagasta plays football in the national league at the regional stadium. Two large universities give the city a student population, and the annual Exponor mining exhibition draws companies from around the world.

The 2024 census counted about 401,000 people in Antofagasta, making it the fifth largest city in Chile and the largest in the north; about 19 per cent were immigrants, nearly all from other South American countries. The city stretches for many kilometres along a narrow coastal plain, hemmed in by the escarpment, with the wealthier districts in the south and centre-south and poorer neighbourhoods in the north.

Copper drives everything. The region produces over half of Chile's copper, and the city is its port, supply base and office centre, with refining, cement and lime works, an industrial district in the north, and lithium shipped from its port. In 2012 Antofagasta had the highest GDP per head in Chile, and living costs are among the highest in the country.

Traffic is concentrated on the few main avenues, and a commuter railway on the old freight line has been under study. The city has a series of urban wetlands that the municipality plans to protect under the Urban Wetlands Law, and the city's history of mudslides, earthquakes and tsunamis is never far from mind.

Antofagasta eats from the sea. Ceviche, fried congrio — conger eel — and shellfish such as machas, surf clams, and locos, a large sea snail known as Chilean abalone, are the classics, served in the small restaurants of the municipal market and along the seafront. The fishing coves, such as La Chimba in the north of the city, land the daily catch.

As in all the mining cities of the north, Chinese restaurants are an everyday staple, and the Las Colonias festival each November is the best chance to taste the cooking of the city's Croatian, Greek, Spanish, Bolivian and other communities. The everyday Chilean repertoire — empanadas, completos, hot dogs loaded with toppings, and pastel de choclo, a baked maize pie — fills the rest of the menu.

Set lunches in the market are the city's cheapest meals, while the seafront malls and the restaurants of the coastal avenue cater to families and business visitors.