Niebla Castle: part of the largest defensive system in the Pacific
In 1950, the “Castle of the Pure and Clean Conception of Monforte de Lemos” - as Niebla Castle is also known - was declared a National Monument.
Southern bulwark
The great land defense wall (southern bulwark), built in 1775 by Juan Garland.
Cancagua (sandstone)
Cancagua (sandstone) and slate (schist), bound together with mortar, were the materials used to build a castle in the New World.
Powder house
The powder house was carved into the cancagua stone and the walls were built with its dressed blocks.
Detail of powder house
The hollow walls of the powder house helped to keep the powder dry.
Ammunition and powder
Powder and ammunition were kept inside, out of the enemy’s sight.
Oven
Ovens were used to get bullets red hot before firing on enemy boats.
Lighthouse
The Niebla lighthouse, which is still in use, is crucial for navigating the estuary.
Northern bulwark
The northern bulwark of the external trench, carved into the rock, with a double walkway from which to keep a lookout.
Stone
Stone upon stone, and man, where was he? (Neruda).
Inner walls of the southern bulwark
The inner walls of the southern bulwark, made of dressed cancagua stone, overlook the weapons yard.
Battery
Battery carved into the rock, with fourteen 24-pound cannons in crossfire range of Amargos Castle.
Replica of a cannon
Detail of the replica of a cannon made by Chile’s naval shipyard (ASMAR). The originals have this broken proturberance.
Original cannon
Original cannon with its battlement, one of the few not to have been eroded by visitors walking over them.
Church
View of the church and the chaplain’s house. Mass was held three times a day.
Chaplain’s house
Two priests lived in the chaplain’s house.
Storehouse
Food brought once a year from the Viceroyalty of Peru was kept in the storehouse.
Keeper’s House
View of the Keeper’s House, the barracks and a mysterious cave under a mound of solidified mortar.
Buttress
A buttress, probably built to hold up a palisade for protection against possible attacks from the sea.
View from Niebla’s Small Beach
View from Niebla’s Small Beach where the La Huairona Stream flows into the sea. A Del Piojo (Of the Lice) battery and a brick factory were located here in the eighteenth century.
Overview of the inside of the castle
Overview of the inside of the castle, with its modern raised walkways. It receives almost 400,000 visitors a year.
Until the twentieth century, all ships sailing between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific necessarily had to pass along the coast of Chile. Valdivia was the best port for riding out storms, stocking up on fresh water and food and obtaining wood for repairs and, by 1544, it was already appearing on the first maps of the New World. At the end of 1599, the old city was destroyed in an uprising, led by Pelantaro, in which the Mapuche recovered their ancestral homelands in the south of Chile and Argentina.
The advantages of the estuary and its strategic importance meant that the enemies of the Spanish crown - the English, the Dutch and the French - coveted this remote part of the world. In 1643, Dutch privateers led by Hendrick Brouwer and Elias Herckmans established a colony in Valdivia where they built a fort and held local parliaments.
However, in the face of a harsh winter, a scarcity of food and the hostility of the Mapuche, they abandoned it after only three months. When this was reported to the Spanish crown’s network of spies, the Viceroy of Peru sent his son to recover the city in 1645.
The Spaniards then established what was to become the largest defense system in the Pacific, with 18 interconnected fortified points that made the port impregnable. Forts of different sizes and lookouts, equipped with stone-firing cannons, factories, docks and five castles were all built with prison labor brought from around the Viceroyalty to what was known as “the key of the South Sea”. No pirate ever fought again in these waters, although 14 ventures proposed to do so.
Life in Niebla consisted in the forced labor of the prisoners and those who had been relegated there, their hunger and the persistent rain of the impenetrable forest.
In 1820, a naval force led by Lord Thomas Cochrane, pretending to be bringing economic assistance from the Spanish crown, attacked the Castle of Corral by land and annexed Valdivia - “the Gibraltar of the South” - to the new Chilean Republic.
In 1950, the “Castle of the Pure and Clean Conception of Monforte de Lemos” - as Niebla Castle is also known - was declared a National Monument and, in 1992, a Museum was founded to foster integral understanding of the territory and its history.
Keywords: Spanish crown / Site museum / Defensive system in the Pacific / Valdivia
