Amid the many colourful hills of the city of Valparaíso, on the coast an hour and a half from Santiago, this house on La Florida Hill was purchased by Neruda in 1959, and was his refuge when he spent longer periods of time in Chile. Also multi-level, it's full of art (including a portrait of Walt Whitman) and eclectic mementos of his travels. Of it the poet rhapsodised:
The house grows and speaks,
it supports itself on its feet,
it has clothing hung on a scaffold,
and like springtime by the sea
swimming like a marine naiad
kisses the sand of Valparaíso,
let us think about it no more: this is the house:
all that is lacking will be blue,
what it needs is to flower.
And that is the job of springtime.
The house also fell into neglect after the Pinochet coup, until it was finally restored and opened to visitors in 1991; it was declared a national monument in 2012.
Read more in our post In the Footsteps of Chile's Great Poet Pablo Neruda.
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