Viña del Mar
Chile · Americas
About Viña del Mar
Viña del Mar is a city and commune on central Chile's Pacific coast. Often referred to as La Ciudad Jardín ("The Garden City"), the city is located on the central coast, on the basins of the Reñaca and Marga Marga streams and along the shores of Valparaíso Bay.
It was founded under its current name on 28 December 1874, by the Chilean politician and writer José Francisco Vergara, who, together with his wife Mercedes Alvares, inherited the lands where the city is now located. To this end, he decided to hire a group of engineers who laid out the street plans and formed an urban nucleus.
With a population of 334,871 inhabitants according to the 2024 census, it is the most populous municipality in the region and fourth-largest city in Chile. Furthermore, together with the communes of Valparaíso, Concón, Quilpué, and Villa Alemana, it forms the Greater Valparaíso metropolitan area (pop. 935,602 in the 2017 census), and it is also a twin city of Valparaíso, as it is completely conurbated with it.
Viticulture, an activity facilitated by the soils and climate of central Chile, began in the Marga Marga stream...
Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.