Plaza de Armas de Santiago

The Plaza de Armas features a grid of palm trees and a central fountain that anchors the heart of Santiago. Pedro de Valdivia laid out the square in fifteen forty-one, positioning it as the military and social center of the new colonial city. During the Chilean War of Independence, royalist forces used the plaza as a makeshift execution ground. They publicly hanged Manuel Rodriguez here in eighteen eighteen, a final desperate attempt to quell the revolutionary spirit that ultimately swept through this very ground.