Experience the best of Concepción

Concepción stands on the Biobío River a few kilometres from the Pacific, the main city of south-central Chile. It was founded in 1550 and moved to its present site in the eighteenth century after an earthquake and tsunami destroyed the first town at Penco. The Plaza de la Independencia is the centre, and the University of Concepción, founded in 1919, has a large mural by the Mexican artist Jorge González Camarena.

Cerro Caracol, a wooded hill above the centre, gives views over the city and the bay. Talcahuano, with its naval base and the museum ship Huáscar, lies on the bay, and Lota, a former coal-mining town, has an old mine and a large park laid out in the nineteenth century. The cliffs, beaches and woods of the Hualpén Peninsula lie at the river mouth.

Seafood comes from the bay and the coast, and caldillo de congrio, a conger-eel soup, is a southern Chilean classic. The valleys of Itata and Biobío make wines from old vines of País and Cinsault. Rain falls mostly in the cooler months, and the summers are dry and mild.