A window to La Moneda

Through a selection of heritage objects, the exhibition accounts for the building designed by Roman architect Joaquín Toesca to be the minting factory which, after becoming the Government palace two hundred years later, transformed into the centre point of Santiago’s Civic District.

Scenographic recreations of two scenes of the history of La Moneda Palace will be exhibited at Centro Cultural La Moneda’s Heritage Gallery. The first begins in the midst of Colonialism, with Francisco García Huidobro’s proposal in 1743, which committed to the creation of the Casa de Moneda free of cost for the Spanish Royal Treasury. Forty years later, Italian architect Joaquín Toesca designed the iconic building with limited resources, bearing in mind the Chilean territory’s seismic reality. The construction spans the period between 1784 and 1805, year in which it started operating as a minting factory, key to facilitate the territory’s economic autonomy. Four decades later, Chile being a newly independent country, President Manuel Bulnes Prieto decides to move the House of Government- that was in Plaza de Armas- to Casa de Moneda.