The Many Houses of Pablo Neruda

You Will Always Remember
By Pablo Neruda

You will remember that leaping stream
where sweet aromas rose and trembled,
and sometimes a bird, wearing water
and slowness, its winter feathers.
You will remember those gifts from the earth:
indelible scents, gold clay,
weeds in the thicket and crazy roots,
magical thorns like swords.
You'll remember the bouquet you picked,
shadows and silent water,
bouquet like a foam-covered stone.
That time was like never, and like always.
So we go there, where nothing is waiting;
we find everything waiting there.

Neruda's Window on the World


Pablo Neruda is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th century. Without a doubt, he is certainly one of the most famous Chileans. Among Neruda's works are poems that range in style from love poems, surrealist works, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos. Neruda always wrote in green ink because he said it was the color of hope.

Neruda also served as an elected senator for the Communist party in Chile and, due to shifting political winds, beginning in 1949 the poet spent three years in exile in Europe. While in exile, a Chilean singer named Matilde Urrutia was hired to care for him and they began an affair that would, years later, culminate in marriage (Neruda's third). His 1952 stay in a villa on the Italian island of Capri was fictionalized in the popular Academy-award winning film Il Postino (The Postman) in the mid '90's.

Amid controversy due to his political activism, Neruda was awarded the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature. Two years later, Neruda, who was suffering from prostate cancer, died of heart failure.

Neruda's Grave at Isla Negra


Neruda owned three houses in Chile. The Fundación Pablo Neruda wouldn’t have been possible without the determination and efforts of Matilde Urrutia, who organized and expanded the poet’s legacy before and after his death. After Matilde's death in 1985, the Foundation restored the homes to how they were when Neruda lived in them. Today, they are all open to the public as museums: La Chascona in Santiago, La Sebastiana in Valparaíso, and Casa de Isla Negra in Isla Negra, where he and Matilde Urrutia are buried.

Casa de Isla Negra

Since 1939, Neruda spent forty years of his life (on and off) here at Isla Negra ("Black Island"). During this time, the poet enlarged the house and filled it with strange and beautiful objects that he collected and gathered from every possible corner of the world. Inside, you'll find winding passages and odd-shaped rooms crammed with fascinating and exotic objects like ships in bottles, butterflies, colored bottles, seashells, African masks, and much more.

Neruda's Beachside Home


The location of Casa de Isla Negra is breathtaking: it overlooks a small beach on the Pacific Ocean. The windows in the home were oriented to provide the poet with expansive views, which provided him with inspiration. Small groups of no more than a dozen people are led through the home by well-knowledged docents. (English speaking guides are available.)

Pablo's Fish Sculpture


Video of Casa de Isla Negra


Black Island in Black & White


An Ornamental Sea Creature


A Sleeping Cat

Bells of the Pacific

One of the Towers

Reading Up on Neruda

La Sebastiana

Of Pablo Neruda's three houses that are open to the public, La Sebastiana in Valparaíso offers the most informal look at the poet. At La Sebastiana, visitors can take a self-guided tour (with a portable audioguide) of the five level home.

House in the Air

Looking Up to the Bedroom Window


Blue Light

La Sebastiana served as the poet's residence at the time he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Neruda was so greatly inspired by his dwelling that he penned a poem in her honor,

I established the house.
First I made it from air.
Then I hung the flag in the air
and left it hanging
from the sky, from the star
from clarity and from darkness…

Lines of Artistry

La Sebastiana in Black and White

Perched high on the aptly named Cerro Bellavista, La Sebastiana has one of the most amazing 360 degree views over all of Valparaíso and the Pacific Ocean beyond. It's no wonder that these dramatic views inspired Neruda to call this house the Casa en El Aire ("House in the Air").

Valparaíso View


Casa en El Aire

La Chascona

Located on a quiet dead-end street in Barrio Bellavista in Santiago and at the foot of Cerro San Cristóbal, La Chascona is the house that Pablo Neruda shared with his third wife, Matilde, from 1955 until his death in 1973. The name La Chascona means messy hair; Neruda named the house as a tribute to Matilde's thick red hair. This was the only Neruda home that we didn't have a chance to visit on the inside.

La Chascona


Street Scene in Santiago


Neruda's Santiago Retreat

Tucked Into the Hillside