San Miguel Open-Air Museum

This community-driven mural project turned the blank side walls of apartment blocks into giant paintings, creating one of Santiago's strongest concentrations of public muralism. The works are large, legible from a distance, and often narrative in spirit, with themes tied to Chilean history, geography, identity, memory, and popular culture. Its authorship is shared across invited muralists and a neighborhood-led cultural movement, which gives the site a different feeling from a purely festival-based district. The project began in the context of the Chilean Bicentennial and became a model of social housing reimagined through public art. The local character comes from the rhythm of everyday residential life: laundry, trees, courtyards, traffic, and monumental wall paintings coexisting block by block.

Carlos Edwards 1502, San Miguel, Santiago, Región Metropolitana, Chile