Santiago

Santiago, also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile and one of the largest cities in the Americas. Located in the Chilean Central Valley within the Santiago Basin, between the Andes to the east and the Chilean Coastal Range to the west, it anchors the Santiago Metropolitan Region and its conurbation of Greater Santiago, which comprises more than forty communes and concentrates over a third of the national population and around 45% of Chile's GDP.

Most of the city lies between 500 and 650 meters (1,640 and 2,130 ft) above sea level, with recent urban growth extending into the Andean foothills.

The basin that Santiago occupies has been inhabited since at least the 10th millennium BC, with early agricultural villages established along the Mapocho River and later incorporated into the Inca sphere of influence.

Despite early food shortages, Indigenous attacks, floods, and devastating earthquakes—notably in 1647—the city consolidated as the capital of the Captaincy General of Chile.