Punta Arenas

Punta Arenas was founded in 1848 as a penal settlement and grew into the port of the Strait of Magellan - every ship between the Atlantic and the Pacific called here, and the sheep estancias of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego shipped their wool through it. The families who ran that trade, the Menendez and Braun houses among them, built the mansions on the Plaza de Armas and the enormous mausoleums in the cemetery. The Panama Canal opened in 1914 and the shipping stopped almost overnight. The city's other history is grimmer: the wool boom involved the systematic killing of the Selk'nam people of Tierra del Fuego.

What you actually see

• A port built on the Strait - every ship between two oceans called here.
• Wool merchants' mansions - on the Plaza de Armas and in the cemetery.
• Ruined by the Panama Canal - the traffic gone after 1914.
• The Selk'nam genocide - the other side of the sheep economy.

When to go

November to March; winter here is dark and severe. A full day.

Honest expectations

The wind is relentless and can be dangerous - ropes are strung on some streets to hold onto. Weather changes hourly. The city is spread out and grey in parts. The Selk'nam history is confronted properly in some museums and glossed in others.

Nearby

Fuerte Bulnes is south; Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine are north.