Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende
Located in the heart of the Barrio República, one of the most traditional neighborhoods with the greatest architectural and historical wealth in Santiago - declared a Typical Zone of Chile by the Council of National Monuments - the house that currently houses the museum dates back to 1925, the year in which Amadeo Heiremans , a businessman of Belgian origin who made his fortune in steel, commissioned two well-known architects to build the property: Fernando Valdivieso and Fernando de la Cruz.
About twenty years later, after the death of Heiremans, her family sold it to the Spanish Embassy, which remained there until 1967. It was later acquired by the University of Chile, to install the Department of Humanistic Studies there, which soon became it became the epicenter of the country's artistic and literary vanguard, and an enclave of countercultural resistance to the dictatorship.
However, in 1978, history took a turn. The house, already known as the Heiremans Palace, became an operations center for the National Information Center (CNI), a body of state repression, persecution, murder and disappearance of political opponents during the military dictatorship in Chile. In the basement, which still shows some vestiges today, the CNI installed a telephone spy system, very well guarded. The exterior door of the house was reinforced with metal plates and armed guards who guarded day and night.
In 2004 the Salvador Allende Foundation acquired the house that had been recovered by the State, which was handed over, in part, to the Art and Solidarity Foundation under a loan agreement since 2006, for the installation of the Museum. During the restoration work, a false ceiling was detached from the attic. What fell from there was transferred to justice to contribute to the investigation in cases of violations of Human Rights, and today it is in the archives of London 38. These were papers and documents that reveal the follow-up carried out by the CNI, organizational charts of the institution, and internal memoranda.