Cerro San Cristóbal (Tupahue, San Cristóbal Hill) is a hill in northern

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whose ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

. It rises 850 m

AMSL Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''. The comb ...

and about 300 m above the rest of Santiago; the peak is the third highest point in the city, after Cerro Manquehue and

Cerro Renca Cerro Renca ''(Spanish for:Renca Hill)'' is a hill straddling the border between Quilicura to the north and Renca to the south, in the city of Santiago, Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of ...

. Cerro San Cristóbal was named by the Spanish

conquistadors Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (, ; meaning 'conquerors') were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, O ...

for St Christopher, in recognition of its use as a landmark. Its original indigenous name is ''Tupahue''.

History and attractions

Cerro San Cristóbal began to be used in 1903 with the installation of the Mills Observatory, currently known as the Manuel Foster Observatory, twin of the

Lick Observatory The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The observatory is managed by th ...

of the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

. On its summit there is a

sanctuary A sanctuary, in its original meaning, is a sacred place, such as a shrine. By the use of such places as a haven, by extension the term has come to be used for any place of safety. This secondary use can be categorized into human sanctuary, a saf ...

dedicated to the

Immaculate Conception The Immaculate Conception is the belief that the Virgin Mary was free of original sin from the moment of her conception. It is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church, meaning that it is held to be a divinely revealed truth w ...

, with a 22-meter statue of the

Blessed Virgin Mary Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jews, Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Jose ...

, an amphitheater and a chapel. The statue of the Immaculate Conception measures 14 meters tall, and the pedestal on which it rests is 8.3 meters in height. It weighs 36,610 kilograms. Within the pedestal there is a small chapel in which

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...

prayed and blessed the city of Santiago on April 1, 1987. The statue is lit up at night by lights placed on its sides, allowing it to be viewed from all over Santiago both day and night. At the foot of the statue there is an amphitheater for holding masses or other religious ceremonies. Near the statue, there is also a small chapel for praying. At the foothills of Cerro San Cristóbal are the

Chilean National Zoo The Chilean National Zoo (''Zoológico Nacional de Chile'') is a zoo that was founded in 1925 in Santiago, Chile. Located at the foot of San Cristóbal Hill in what is known as the Santiago Metropolitan Park (''Parque Metropolitano de Santiago''), ...

and a Japanese-style garden, and up there are also two municipal pools, ''Tupahue'' and ''Antilén''. Cerro San Cristóbal houses Santiago's largest public park: the

Santiago Metropolitan Park The Santiago Metropolitan Park is an urban park located within the city of Santiago, capital of Chile. Consisting of the San Cristóbal, Chacarillas and Los Gemelos hills, and the areas of Tupahue, Lo Saldés, Pirámide and Bosque Santiago, the ...

(''Parque Metropolitano'').

Access

The summit of Cerro San Cristóbal can be reached by foot (about a 45-minute walk, involving a 300m change in elevation), by car via the road joining the Santiago Metropolitan Park, by the

Funicular de Santiago The Funicular de Santiago is a funicular railway on a slope of the San Cristóbal Hill, in the city of Santiago de Chile. It forms part of the tourist attractions of the Santiago Metropolitan Park. History The idea of a funicular originated w ...

(the base of which sits next to the Zoo at the North end of Pio Nono in Barrio Bellavista), or by a Teleferico (cable car located northeast at the Oasis station). A

cable car Cable car most commonly refers to the following cable transportation systems: * Aerial lift, such as aerial tramways and gondola lifts, in which the vehicle is suspended in the air from a cable ** Aerial tramway ** Chairlift ** Gondola lift *** Bi ...

provided service to the top of the hill from the Pedro de Valdivia entrance since 1980 until 2009, when the gearbox controlling the system's speed exploded, leaving the system unusable. A project was presented in 2011 to open for tender on the system, giving it new cabins and restore infrastructure. The service was expected to be back in 2012, however the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning received only one offer that was rejected, so the tender was ended and a new public contest was announced, that began in 2013.
Then, in December 2014 it was announced that the cable car would re-open in the second semester of 2016 after a series of maintenance and remodeling works to be done from March 2015, costing US$9.5 million. These works complete the installation of the new 46 cabin network, of which 8 will be enabled for the transport of bicycles, strollers or wheelchairs. The transport cabins have a 6-person capacity and the system was reopened in November 2016. From the top of the hill are two pools – Tupahue and Antilén, and access the National Zoo of Chile at the Bellavista entrance to Cerro San Cristóbal. The Children's Park of Cerro San Cristóbal also provides entrance to the hill via Avenida Perú.Casi 16 mil personas han visitado el Parque de la Infancia del cerro San Cristóbal a dos semanas de su apertura
Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo. 11 May 2012. Retrieved 23 November 2012.

References

External links

*
Virtual Tour on 360° of San Cristobal Hill
Chilexplora.com
Photographs of Mills Observatory from the Lick Observatory Records Digital Archive, UC Santa Cruz Library's Digital Collections
{{DEFAULTSORT:San Cristobal Hill Geography of Santiago, Chile Hills of Chile Tourist attractions in Santiago, Chile Landforms of Santiago Metropolitan Region