Isla Negra

Pablo Neruda bought a stone cabin on this shore in 1939 and spent the next thirty years extending it into a house shaped like the thing he collected most: ships. It is low and narrow with plank floors and beamed ceilings, full of figureheads salvaged from wrecks, ships in bottles, bowsprits, shells, coloured glass, masks and narwhal tusks, arranged as a working environment rather than a display. He wrote a good deal of the Canto General here. After the coup in 1973 the house was sealed and vandalised; it was restored and opened in the 1990s, and Neruda and Matilde Urrutia are buried in the garden, looking at the sea.

What you actually see

• A house built like a ship - extended over thirty years from a stone cabin.
• Figureheads, bottles and shells - the collections he lived among.
• Sealed and damaged after 1973 - and restored decades later.
• Two graves in the garden - Neruda and Matilde Urrutia, above the sea.

When to go

Year round; booking helps in summer. Half a day.

Honest expectations

Entry is on timed audio-guided tours and photography inside is prohibited. It books out in January and February. The village around is small. Neruda's politics and his own writings about his conduct are part of how the house is now discussed.

Nearby

Algarrobo and El Quisco are north; Cartagena is south.