Churches in Chiloé - UNESCO World Heritage Site

Wooden churches of Chiloé

"Chiloé, actually Isla Grande de Chiloé ("big island of Chiloé"), is the second largest island in Chile after Tierra del Fuego (which is half owned by Argentina). Today, the island, which is largely dependent on tourism and fishing, has about 150,000 inhabitants. In 1553, the Spaniards landed on the island for the first time and made contact with the indigenous Indians; in 1567 Captain Martín Ruiz de Gamboa founded the present-day capital, Castro. In 1608, the Jesuits came to Chiloé and four years later built the first church on the island. At the same time, they launched a missionary campaign among the local Huilliches, which was continued by the Franciscans afterwards.

Chiloé is famous above all for its over 150 wooden churches. A large part of these were built mostly from cypress wood in the 17th and 18th centuries. These unique houses of worship combine European architecture with elements of the indigenous population. The outer walls of the churches are covered with artistically decorated colored wooden shingles, and the interiors are partly very colorfully painted and decorated.

In 2000, UNESCO declared 16 of the wooden churches in Chiloé as a World Heritage Site."

So far, I have used a text from the internet (www.worldheritage.com) 😊. But a little bit of historical background is also necessary. 

So we started to visit at least some of these churches. On the first day, we managed to see five of them comfortably. In the evening, we had dinner with a very nice couple from Friedberg, whom we had met in Puerto Octay and who had the same route as us for a few more days. Therefore, we had to hurry a bit. On the second day, we started again and in the end, our athletic ambition was to see as many churches as possible. Since we don't do any sports otherwise..... 😂. So we actually visited 14 of the 16 World Heritage churches. We also had to cross over to two smaller islands. The other two churches are located on slightly more remote islands, where we would have had to take the ferry more often. That was too much hassle for us and we would have needed a third day. So it was just 14. Not all of them were open, so we couldn't always go inside. They were all somewhat similar, but also very different. It was a really interesting tour, on which we of course also saw a lot of beautiful landscape. But more on that in a separate text. We briefly considered whether we now have a halo after visiting so many churches. It probably didn't work, but we can live with that 😇.