Memorial Museum, Santiago de Chile

Memorial Museum, Santiago de Chile - darkometer rating : 8 - Easily the most impressive memorial museum in South America, this relatively new institution in Santiago de Chile chronicles and illustrates the dark era of the military coup, dictatorship and widespread human rights abuses during the Pinochet Junta 1973-1990. It has to be the No. 1 must-do for any dark tourist visiting this city. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations More background info : For more on the historical background covered by the museum see below (under 'what there is to see') – and in general cf. Chile and Santiago . Santiago's Memorial Museum, or Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos ('Museum of Memory and Human Rights') to give its full official name, is the newest and most elaborate in Chile's endeavours to properly confront the dark chapters of its 20th century history, i.e. in particular the Pinochet era. It was a long struggle to get this far, though. It was only in 2007, i.e. 17 years after the end of the dictatorship and Chile's "official" return to democracy, that then President Michelle Bachelet, herself once a detention and torture victim, at one point held at the infamous Villa Grimaldi , announced the founding of such an institution. Competitions for the design of the museum as well as the building to house it were held over the following year, construction of the museum began in 2008 and was completed in 2009.