Punta Arenas

Ferdinand Magellan sailed past the site in 1520, and the English navigator John Narborough, on his voyage of 1669–1671, described a low point with a few trees that he called Sandy Point, the origin of the Spanish name Punta Arenas. Spain tried to control the strait with settlements in 1584, Nombre de Jesús and Ciudad del Rey Don Felipe, but both failed; the second became known as Port Famine after its colonists starved. In 1843 Chile sent the schooner Ancud to build Fuerte Bulnes on the strait, and in 1848 the governor José de los Santos Mardones moved the settlement to a better site on the Las Minas river and named it Punta Arenas.

The early town was a penal colony and a punishment posting for soldiers. In 1851 a prisoners' mutiny killed Governor Muñoz Gamero, and in 1877 the artillerymen's mutiny destroyed much of the town. Land grants from 1867 drew settlers, first British and then, from 1906, more Croatians than any other group, attracted by a gold rush, sheep farming and the shipping trade. Between about 1890 and 1940 the Sociedad Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego, founded in 1893 by Sara Braun and her brother Mauricio, built a sheep empire of millions of animals from its headquarters here, and the port served steamships as a coaling station. The same boom brought the destruction of the Selk'nam people, in which later historians have examined the role of the leading ranching families.

The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 reduced the strait's importance for shipping. The city was renamed Magallanes in 1927 but took back its old name in 1938. It became a free port in 1977, and oil, tourism and Antarctic logistics have sustained it since.

Punta Arenas is a city of immigrants. It is said to have the largest proportion of people of Croatian descent anywhere outside the former Yugoslavia, and Croatian names remain on shops, streets and buildings, alongside the largest share of people of British descent in Chile and families of Spanish, German, Italian, Swiss and Irish origin. Sindhi merchants have arrived since the early 1900s, and the city has the southernmost Hindu temple in the world.

The wool barons left a city of grand buildings: the palaces around Plaza Muñoz Gamero, the Braun-Menéndez mansion that houses the regional museum, and the cemetery whose shaped trees and family mausoleums have seen it ranked by CNN among the most beautiful cemeteries in the world. The city was long nicknamed the "city of red roofs" for its painted metal roofs, which have become multicoloured since about 1970. Local legends promise a return to anyone who kisses the foot of the Magellan statue or eats calafate berries.

Cultural life includes the municipal theatre, a cluster of museums and the winter carnival each July. The University of Magallanes, founded in 1981, anchors academic life and publishes the journal Magallania. Gabriel Boric, President of Chile from 2022 to 2026, was born here, as was the historian Mateo Martinic.

The city had about 132,000 people at the 2024 census, which makes it the largest city south of the 46th parallel and the southernmost city of more than 100,000 people in the world. About 6 per cent of residents are immigrants, most from elsewhere in South America.

The economy has diversified since the wool era. Chile's main oil reserves are nearby, sheep and cattle farming still matter, and tourism has grown steadily, with cruise ships along the fjords and voyages to Antarctica. The free-trade zone, the Zona Franca, is a large duty-free shopping centre, and the city is a logistics base for Antarctic science, with charter flights to the ice.

Daily life is shaped by wind, light and distance. Gusts are strongest in summer, when days stretch late into the evening, while winter brings snow and short days. Residents are exposed to strong ultraviolet light because of the thinning ozone layer overhead. The road to the rest of Chile runs through Argentina, and the city keeps its own time zone, on summer time all year round since 2017.

Punta Arenas shares the cooking of Magallanes. Cordero magallánico, lamb raised on the steppe and roasted for hours beside an open fire, is the centrepiece of family gatherings. The cold waters of the strait and channels supply centolla, the southern king crab, its smaller cousin centollón, sea urchins, mussels and southern hake, which appear on the menus of the city's restaurants.

Immigrants shaped the table too. Croatian and German settlers brought cakes and pastries, and afternoon tea with cakes is a Punta Arenas habit. Calafate, the dark blue berry of a thorny Patagonian shrub, flavours ice cream, jam and a syrup used for the calafate sour, a local variant of the pisco sour; legend says whoever eats the berry will return.

Beer has long been brewed in the city, which claims the southernmost brewery in the world, and local craft labels have joined it. Mate is common in homes, as across the region.