La Serena

Before the Spanish, the site was occupied by a village called Viluma. La Serena was founded by Captain Juan Bohón on the orders of Pedro de Valdivia to secure the route between Santiago and Lima; the exact date is disputed, but it is usually given as 1544, which makes it, as the city's own article puts it, the country's second oldest city after the national capital, Santiago. In January 1549 an indigenous uprising burned the settlement and killed almost all the Spaniards, and Francisco de Aguirre refounded it that August as San Bartolomé de La Serena, on the site of today's Plaza de Armas. It received the title of city by royal decree in 1552.

The colonial town suffered repeatedly. The English privateer Bartholomew Sharp partly burned and looted it in 1680, Edward Davis set fire to the convent of Santo Domingo in 1686, and an earthquake in 1730 almost destroyed it. Copper brought industry: the Lambert smelter, founded around 1840, made La Serena one of the first places in Chile touched by the Industrial Revolution. In the Revolution of 1859 the city was taken by rebels led by Pedro León Gallo, before government troops defeated them at the Battle of Cerro Grande. Iron mining brought a new boom from the 1920s.

The look of the modern city dates from 1948–52, when President Gabriel González Videla, a native of La Serena, carried out the Plan Serena, redeveloping the centre in a single neocolonial style and adding the lighthouse, the stadium and the statues of Avenida Francisco de Aguirre. Since then tourism, the universities and astronomy have driven its growth.

La Serena is known as the city of churches, or of belfries, for the many stone churches of its centre, several built of a local shell-studded limestone and some dating back centuries. It is the seat of the Archdiocese of La Serena, one of five in Chile, and its old centre is the largest protected traditional zone in the country. Houses of the late 19th century were built of Oregon pine, brought to Chile as ballast in ships calling at Coquimbo, and of adobe.

It is a university city, home to the University of La Serena and several private universities, and a centre for astronomy: the operators of La Silla, Cerro Tololo, the Gemini telescopes and Las Campanas keep offices here, and the city hosts the base facility of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. In summer it turns into one of the country's main holiday resorts, with music festivals, concerts and fashion events; the La Serena Song Festival, created in 2004, has grown in national importance.

Football follows Deportes La Serena, nicknamed Los Papayeros after the papayas grown in the Elqui Valley, whose great rival is Coquimbo Unido from across the bay. The Elqui Valley's best-known daughter, the Nobel-winning poet Gabriela Mistral, is a regional icon, and the rivalry with Peru over pisco is taken seriously here, in the heart of Chilean pisco country.

The 2017 census counted about 221,000 people in the commune of La Serena, and the conurbation it forms with Coquimbo was estimated at more than 506,000 in 2020, the fourth-largest urban area in Chile. In summer the city's population roughly doubles. People live in districts spread over ocean terraces and hills: the old centre, Las Compañías to the north, San Joaquín and La Pampa to the south, La Florida and the university district to the east, and the towers of the Avenida del Mar to the west.

Tourism has become one of the most important parts of the economy, alongside universities, regional government, commerce and iron-ore mining. The centre holds the region's main financial institutions, and large malls serve the suburbs. The only railway still crossing the city carries iron ore from the El Romeral mine to the port of Guayacán in Coquimbo.

Growth brings its own problems. A real-estate boom along the beach has raised apartment towers on the seafront; housing has spread close to the airport, prompting a plan to move it near Tongoy; and drought has left recent years drier than the long-term average, while summer wildfires threaten the dry eucalyptus and scrub around the city.

The papaya is La Serena's emblem: the small, fragrant Chilean papaya grown in the Elqui Valley is sold as juice, preserved in syrup and as sweets, above all at La Recova market, alongside dried fruit from the valley. Pisco, the grape brandy distilled in the Elqui and Limarí valleys, is the drink of the region, taken as a pisco sour — in Chile made with lime juice and sugar — or as a piscola with cola.

The coast supplies the rest. Machas a la parmesana, surf clams baked with parmesan cheese, are a Chilean classic popular along the coast, and seafood empanadas and fresh fish are served in Coquimbo's port and in the fishing coves along the bay. Goat's cheese from the dry hills of the region, eaten fresh or aged, appears on menus and market stalls, and kid goat, cabrito, is roasted for festivals.

Restaurants and bars gather in the centre around O'Higgins and Eduardo de la Barra, busy with students, and along the beachfront. Everyday Chilean food — empanadas de pino, completos and set lunches — fills the rest, and the Limarí valley to the south has become known for its cool-climate wines.