Description of the attraction
La Sebastian's mansion is one of three houses that belonged to the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973). This house, located in Cerro Florida in Valparaiso, attracts with its unusual architecture and magnificent views of the bay from its windows. Like the other two houses of the great poet, La Chascona in Santiago and Cassa de Isla Negra, it is a museum under the Pablo Neruda Foundation.
This house was designed and built by the Spanish builder Sebastian Collado, intending to spend the last years of his life in it. But the construction was interrupted due to his sudden death. After his death, the unfinished building was inherited by the family, who did not know what to do with it. In 1959, the house was sold to Pablo Neruda.
The original four-story building structure has been slightly modified and an attic has been added. Famous artists Francisco Velasco and Maria Martner painted the walls of this building in the form of a map of Patagonia. The windows of the house offer a magnificent view of the bay and the coast.
The small museum has many interesting exhibits and photographs related to Pablo Neruda: sets of dishes with balloons, all kinds of nautical charts, antique stained glass windows, stuffed birds brought from Venezuela, a magnificent Italian table service that was used for dinner parties, paintings. The walls of the building are painted in pink, blue, yellow, green, purple. And the large dormer windows give the structure the look of a ship that miraculously found itself on the shore.
The grand opening of the house in 1961 coincided with the celebration of Chile's Independence Day. After the completion of construction, the poet spent a whole year in this mansion, as well as the last year of his life. Every day spent in this house, Pablo Neruda made for himself special.
After the death of the poet in 1973, during the military dictatorship, the house was abandoned. In 1991 it was decided to reconstruct the building. A year later, it opened its doors to the public as a house-museum of the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. In 2012, the house was added to the list of Chilean National Monuments.
