Things to do
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Castillo de Niebla
A Spanish battery of 1671 set on the cliff at the river mouth, guns still mounted in embrasures cut back into the rock. The powder magazine holds a museum on the whole defensive system, the site closes on Mondays, and the drive out from Valdivia takes about twenty five minutes.
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Castillo de San Sebastián de la Cruz
The largest of the river mouth forts, begun in 1645 on the Corral shore facing Niebla so that crossfire from the two closed the channel. Cochrane's marines took it by land assault in February 1820, and the crossing from Niebla goes by passenger ferry in about twenty minutes.
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Isla Teja
The island across the Calle Calle from the centre, carrying the Universidad Austral campus, its botanical garden and both museums under old exotic plantings. A road bridge takes the traffic, a riverside path circles most of the shore, and the university farm keeps cattle within sight of the lecture halls.
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Mercado Fluvial
The river market runs along the Prat costanera, selling congrio, merluza and machas straight off the boats tied at the wall. South American sea lions crowd the steps below the stalls for the offcuts, which is a hazard as much as a spectacle, and the trading finishes by early afternoon.
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Museo de Arte Contemporáneo
Chile's contemporary art museum occupies the shell of the Anwandter brewery on the Isla Teja bank, left broken by the 1960 earthquake and rebuilt around the ruin rather than over it. Exhibitions change several times a year, and the river terrace stays open whether or not a show is hanging.
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Museo Mauricio van de Maele
The historical and anthropological collection of the Universidad Austral, in the Anwandter family's 1861 riverside mansion on Isla Teja. Mapuche silver, German settler furniture and the record of the 1960 earthquake fill the rooms, and one ticket also admits to the contemporary art museum beside it.
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Parque Oncol
A private reserve of Valdivian rainforest on Cerro Oncol north of the city, where the summit road reaches a lookout taking in the Pacific and the Andes on a clear day. Trails run through olivillo and ulmo, a canopy zipline works in season, and the last kilometres are steep gravel.
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Santuario de la naturaleza Carlos Anwandter
The wetland the 1960 earthquake made, where the Río Cruces drowned farmland and became a Ramsar site holding black necked swans in the thousands. Boats run upriver from Valdivia to Punucapa, the swan population collapsed in 2004 after an upstream mill discharge and has since recovered, and winter is the fullest season for birds.
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Torreón Los Canelos
A squat stone tower of 1774, one of two left from the wall the Spanish threw around the settlement, standing at the corner of General Lagos and Yerbas Buenas. It is closed to entry and read from outside, and the street past it keeps the best run of nineteenth century German houses in the city.