Description of the attraction
The Vergara Palace, with an area of 3000 square meters, was built in 1910 by the architect Ettore Vergara Petri Santini on the site of a family mansion destroyed by a terrible earthquake on August 16, 1906. This palace is the family home of Jose Francisco Vergara, who founded Viña del Mar. The prototype of the palace was an Italian villa in the Venetian Gothic style.
In this palace lived the daughter of Jose Francisco Vergara Etchevers - Blanca Errazuriz Vergara Alvarez. Dona Blanca was married to Guillermo Errazuriz and had five children: Hugh, William, White, Manuela and Amalia. Doña Blanca Errazriz Vergara Alvarez specially invited the most famous people of that time to her house and received them on the ground floor of the palace in the halls where the museum is currently located. Most of the furniture in various styles was purchased in Europe.
Subsequently, many misfortunes befell the Vergara family. Doña Blanca spent the last years of her life in one of the parts of Vergara's palace, all alone. She donated 60 works by prominent European artists to the collection of the museum that opened in the palace.
The last person to live in the Vergara Palace was Amalia Errazuriz Vergara, who died shortly after the Vergara Park and Palace became the property of the municipality and Vergara Palace became the Museum of Fine Arts (1941).
The palace has beautiful lawns and gardens with exotic plants brought from Asia, Australia and California. The first floor of the palace is occupied by the Museum of Fine Arts, and the upper floors now host thematic seminars, performances by guests of the Philharmonic, and the School of Fine Arts.
At the entrance to the park you can see sculptures, including a bust of Gabriella Mistral, a famous Chilean poet, diplomat and educator, one of the leading figures in Chilean literature and the first woman in Latin America to be awarded the Nobel Prize. The bust was donated to the museum by the sculptor Nina Anjuita.
