🇨🇱 Chile · North and desert
La Serena is one of those Chilean cities where history is in the air on every corner. The country's second-oldest city, founded in 1544, it preserves a historic quarter with an unmistakable colonial air: streets lined with stone churches, a tree-shaded square and a set of neocolonial buildings that give it a calm, very recognizable elegance. Added to that heritage is its seaside character, with the long Avenida del Mar running for kilometers along the beach to the symbolic Faro Monumental.
But La Serena's great appeal is also what surrounds it. The city is the gateway to the Elqui Valley, land of pisco, of Gabriela Mistral and of skies so clear they make it one of the great astronomical destinations on the planet. To the north, the Humboldt Penguin Reserve protects islands teeming with marine wildlife; to the south, Bosque Fray Jorge National Park astonishes with a humid forest that survives on fog, in the middle of semi-desert. Few cities offer such variety at such short range.
This guide covers La Serena with a practical, warm eye: how to enjoy its historic center and its churches, where to catch the sun along the Avenida del Mar, how to organize excursions to the Elqui, the observatories, the penguins and the Fray Jorge forest, and how to get around comfortably. With its temperate climate, its heritage and its strategic position in the Norte Chico, La Serena is ideal for anyone looking to combine history, nature, stars and sea.
La Serena is the second-oldest city in Chile. It was founded in 1544 on the orders of Pedro de Valdivia, under Juan Bohón, to secure communications between Santiago and Peru. A few years later it was destroyed in an uprising by the region's Indigenous Diaguita people, and had to be refounded by Francisco de Aguirre in 1549, this time on a sounder plan. Through the colonial period La Serena endured attacks by the pirates and privateers who preyed on the Pacific coast, such as the famous sacking by the English pirate Bartholomew Sharp in the 17th century. The city established itself as the farming and mining center of the Norte Chico (with the region's silver and copper). In the 20th century its present appearance was defined by the so-called 'Plan Serena', driven in the 1940s by President Gabriel González Videla — a native of the city — which gave La Serena its characteristic neocolonial architectural style, its avenues, restored churches and public buildings, transforming it into the harmonious tourist city it is today. Its closeness to the Elqui Valley, to the observatories and to the sea consolidated it as one of the great destinations of the Norte Chico. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Norte Chico of green valleys and crystal-clear skies: colonial La Serena, the third oldest city in Chile; the mystical Elqui Valley, birthplace of Gabriela Mistral and of pisco; and the great observatories that make this land a world capital of astronomy.
Read the history of Coquimbo Region →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
La Serena has the distinction of being the second-oldest city in Chile, after Santiago. Its founding answered a strategic need of the Spanish conquest: securing overland communication between Santiago, founded only in 1541, and Peru, the center of Spanish power in South America. The conquistador Pedro de Valdivia understood he needed an intermediate city on the northern road, in the valley of the Elqui river (then called Coquimbo), near the coast.
The task of founding the city fell to Juan Bohón (also written Bohón or Bon), one of Valdivia's lieutenants, who established the settlement in 1544 under the name Villanueva de La Serena, in tribute to Valdivia's home region in Extremadura, Spain. The area had already been surveyed from the sea by the navigator Juan Bautista Pastene. The new town was thus born as a foothold on the long and dangerous route north.
The first years were precarious. The region was inhabited by the Diaguita, a people of farmers and potters of the Norte Chico with a rich culture, known for their decorated ceramics, who did not peacefully accept the occupation of their lands. The small Spanish town sat in a territory where Indigenous resistance was simmering, which would soon lead to a dramatic episode that came close to wiping it off the map.
The fragile town of La Serena did not last long in its first incarnation. In 1549 the Diaguita of the region, exhausted by abuse and by the occupation of their lands, rose against the Spanish and attacked the city, destroying it almost completely and killing much of its population. It was a brutal blow that exposed the fragility of the conquest in the Norte Chico and the strength of Indigenous resistance.
Pedro de Valdivia, determined to keep control of the route to Peru, ordered the city refounded. The task fell to Francisco de Aguirre, one of his most energetic (and most feared) captains, who refounded La Serena in 1549, this time on a sounder plan, with better defensive organization and a firmer settlement. It's this refounding that gave rise to the city that survives today.
The refounded La Serena slowly consolidated as a center of colonial life in the north: the seat of a farming and mining territory, an obligatory stop on the royal road to Peru, and home to religious orders that began raising convents and churches. The city put down roots, though the threats didn't disappear: to the tension with Indigenous peoples would be added, in the centuries that followed, a new danger arriving from the sea.
Through the colonial period, La Serena developed as an urban center of some importance in the north of the Kingdom of Chile. Its economy rested on farming in the fertile neighboring valleys and, above all, on mining: the Norte Chico was rich in silver and copper, and mining would shape the area's character for centuries. The city gradually acquired convents and churches — the seed of the extraordinary religious ensemble that characterizes it — and a structured colonial society.
But La Serena's prosperity and coastal position made it a tempting target for the pirates and privateers who, from the 16th century onward, ravaged the Pacific coast attacking the ports and cities of the Spanish empire. La Serena suffered several attacks during the colonial era. The most famous was that of the English pirate Bartholomew Sharp, who in 1680 sacked and burned much of the city, an episode etched into its historical memory.
These attacks forced defenses to be reinforced and left their mark on the city's life, which learned to live with the threat from the sea. Even so, La Serena held on and grew, consolidating its role as capital of the Norte Chico. By the time Chilean independence arrived in the first decades of the 19th century, the city was an established regional center, with a well-defined colonial identity and its heritage riches taking shape.
With Chilean independence, La Serena joined republican life as capital of Coquimbo province and center of the Norte Chico. The 19th century was a period of ups and downs marked by the cycles of silver and copper mining, which enriched some families and gave the city and the region moments of plenty. Mining drew capital, produced fortunes and left its mark on local society.
La Serena also took part in the political processes of 19th-century Chile, including some of the revolts and civil wars that shook the country in that era, in which the Norte Chico, thanks to its mining wealth, played a significant role. The city kept its character as a traditional, genteel center, with an elite tied to mining and farming, and went on enriching its religious and civic heritage.
Over the century, La Serena consolidated its look as a historic city, with its colonial grid, its stone churches and its mansions. It would be in the 20th century, however, that the city underwent the deepest and most defining urban transformation of its history, at the hands of one of its most illustrious sons, who would reach the presidency and reinvent the face of his home town.
The transformation that gave La Serena its present face came in the mid-20th century and is bound to one name: Gabriel González Videla, a lawyer and politician born in the city, who was president of Chile between 1946 and 1952. Deeply attached to his home town, González Videla drove an ambitious urban renewal plan known as the 'Plan Serena', inspired by planning models that combined tradition and modernity.
The Plan Serena, carried out mainly around the late 1940s and early 1950s, gave the city a unified architectural aesthetic in neocolonial, Hispanic style: churches and buildings were restored and harmonized, new public buildings, squares, avenues and monuments went up, and rules were set so that construction respected that colonial language. The result was a harmonious, elegant city with an unmistakable visual stamp that sets it apart from any other in Chile.
The plan didn't only beautify La Serena; it laid the foundations of its tourist calling. The city came to be valued for its heritage beauty and its appeal, and its development as a seaside destination was boosted. Much of what wins visitors over today — the remarkably coherent historic center, the churches given fresh value, the stately air — is a direct result of that vision. The Casa de Gabriel González Videla, now a museum, commemorates the man who reinvented his city.
Contemporary La Serena is a city that has managed to marry its rich past with a dynamic present. From the second half of the 20th century, and especially in recent decades, it has consolidated as one of Chile's leading tourist destinations, thanks to the combination of its historic heritage, its temperate climate, its beaches and the Avenida del Mar, and its strategic position as gateway to the wonders of the Norte Chico.
The city has grown considerably and, together with neighboring Coquimbo, today forms one of the country's most important conurbations. Summer tourism drawn by the beaches coexists with year-round tourism interested in history, seafood cooking and, increasingly, astronomy. Because one of the region's great assets is its sky: the dryness, the altitude and the low light pollution of the Norte Chico make it one of the best in the world for stargazing.
That quality has made the Coquimbo region an epicenter of world astronomy, with prestigious scientific observatories (such as Cerro Tololo) and a flourishing astrotourism scene, especially in the nearby Elqui Valley. La Serena, as regional capital and excursion base — to the Elqui, to the Humboldt penguins, to the Fray Jorge forest — is today the heart of a destination offering history, sea, nature and stars, true to its serene name and to its long run as one of Chile's founding cities.