La Sebastiana (Pablo Neruda's House)

Neruda began looking for a house in Valparaiso in 1959, wanting one that seemed to float in the air yet stood firmly on the ground. The house had been started by the Spanish builder Sebastian Collado Mauri, who intended to spend his last years there but died before finishing it. His family sold it to Neruda, who named it La Sebastiana in his honour. Surnames appear as Collado or Collao in different sources.

The building had four floors. Neruda shared it with friends, Francisco Velasco and the artist Maria Martner, who took the lower floors, while Neruda took the upper levels and added an attic. Martner made the mural that rises with the first-floor staircase.

The house was inaugurated on 18 September 1961 with a large party that coincided with Chile's independence day. Spanish Wikipedia describes narrow stairs, with the sea coming into view more and more as one climbs, and views over the bay and the hills of the port. The walls are painted in a mix of pinks, blues, yellows and greens, and the rooms contain maps, maritime paintings, stained glass, a portrait of Lord Cochrane and quirky objects such as an Italian cow-shaped tureen.

Neruda liked to spend New Year's Eve at La Sebastiana, when Valparaiso's fireworks over the harbour can be seen from the house, and he handed out hand-drawn menus in green ink.

After Neruda died in 1973 the house was left abandoned during the military dictatorship until it was restored in 1991. It opened to the public as a house museum the following year and was declared a Historic Monument by Decree No. 360 of 2011, according to Chile's National Monuments Council (some sources give 5 January 2012). Sources differ on details of vandalism after the coup, so those accounts are best treated carefully.

The national monument decree, quoted in Spanish-language Wikipedia, describes the exterior as having a variety of forms, colours and heights arising from ideas Neruda had for its different parts. Visitors see small details such as ship-style skylights alongside big windows facing the bay.

Travel accounts say that Neruda hosted a housewarming party in 1961 at which he played a telescope prank on guests about a supposed neighbour. As such stories vary by source, they are best taken as colour rather than settled history.

The house sits on a steep hill reached by winding streets and, in the usual approach, by a funicular to the upper part of Cerro Bellavista. Wikipedia's Valparaiso article notes that the Bellavista hill has an open-air museum.

A private guided visit with a dedicated vehicle and driver can pair La Sebastiana with Neruda's La Chascona in Santiago or with the funiculars and UNESCO-listed hills of Valparaiso.