Chile's garden city — where Viña del Mar's Avenida Perú hugs the rocky Pacific coast with a boulevard of palm trees and hydrangea gardens between the cliff edge and the high-rise hotel strip, the Festival Internacional de la Canción de Viña del Mar (February, in the open-air Quinta Vergara amphitheatre) is the most-watched song contest in the Spanish-speaking world with cumulative television audiences exceeding 2 billion over its 65-year history, the Reloj de Flores (Flower Clock — 1,500 living flowers maintained by the city gardens department in a clock face on the seafront) has been photographed more times than any other landmark in Chile, and Viña del Mar's Casino Municipal (1930 Art Deco building) is the most visited building in Chile after the La Moneda presidential palace
Viña del Mar (330,000 city; 900,000 greater Valparaíso metro) is Chile's premier beach resort city, 130 km northwest of Santiago and adjacent to Valparaíso — the two cities are effectively one continuous urban area but with entirely distinct characters: Valparaíso is gritty, steep, and artistic; Viña del Mar is flat, manicured, and bourgeois. The city hosts more Chilean domestic tourists per year than any other destination outside Santiago, particularly in January–February (austral summer).
The land that is now Viña del Mar was a hacienda called Viña del Mar (Vineyard of the Sea) owned by the Alvarez family in the early 19th century. The 1855 railway connection between Valparaíso and Santiago — the first railway in South America, built by William Wheelwright — passed through the hacienda, and the station attracted a summer colony of wealthy Valparaíso merchants who built the first resort villas. The city was officially founded in 1874 and grew rapidly alongside the expansion of the Chilean port economy through the nitrate boom era (1880s–1920s). The Quinta Vergara estate was don…