Things to do
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Cementerio Municipal
Avenues of clipped cypress divide the tombs of Croatian, English, Welsh and Swiss settlers, with the Braun and Menéndez mausoleums at the crossing and a shrine at the far wall where notes are left to the Indiecito. It opens daily, and an hour covers the main avenues at a walk.
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Cerro de la Cruz
A climb of about fifteen minutes up Señoret from the square reaches a terrace above the coloured roofs, with the strait and the low line of Tierra del Fuego behind them on a clear day. It is the one point in the city where the grid, the port and the water read as a single thing.
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Fuerte Bulnes
A reconstructed timber stockade on a headland about 55 kilometres south, raised in 1843 to claim the strait for Chile and abandoned within five years for the site that became Punta Arenas. It stands inside the Parque del Estrecho de Magallanes, and the road down the coast is paved the whole way.
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Hotel José Nogueira
The hotel occupies the private wing of the Sara Braun palace on the main square, with the original panelling, tiled stoves and a glass winter garden used as the dining room. Rooms are kept in period, and the location puts the museums and the waterfront within a few blocks.
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Monumento Natural Los Pingüinos
Something over a hundred thousand Magellanic penguins nest on Isla Magdalena through the summer, and the roped path from the landing to the lighthouse runs straight between the burrows. Boats sail from Punta Arenas between November and March, time ashore is capped at about an hour, and a strong westerly cancels the crossing.
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Museo Nao Victoria
A yard north of the city holds full-scale replicas built to the original plans: Magellan's Nao Victoria, Shackleton's James Caird, the schooner Ancud and HMS Beagle. Visitors board every one of them and go below decks, which takes about an hour and is far better on a dry day.
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Museo Regional de Magallanes
The Braun-Menéndez mansion is kept as the family left it, the dining table laid and the marble bathrooms plumbed, with the regional history collection on the floor above. Labels run in Spanish and English and the visit takes about an hour, which makes it the clearest account of how the wool fortunes were built.
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Palacio Sara Braun
Built between 1894 and 1905 for the widow who came to control a great part of the region's sheep land, with a French architect, imported furniture and a winter garden under glass. Part of the house is now a hotel and part stays open as public rooms, so the ballroom and panelled library can be seen without a booking.
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Plaza Muñoz Gamero
Clipped cypresses ring the main square, and the 1920 monument to Magellan stands at its centre, its bronze Selk'nam foot rubbed bright by the local belief that touching it brings a return to Patagonia. The mansions of the wool families and the old Sociedad Menéndez Behety offices face it on every side.