Neruda loved Valparaíso. He usually travelled from Isla Negra to this port, where he used to stay for some days in the house inhabited by the married couple of Marie Martner and Francisco Velasco.

In 1959, back from a long time in Venezuela, he requested Sara Vial to look for a place in Valparaíso where he could live and write in peace.

To find a house meeting Neruda’s requirements wasn’t easy. It had to be on a hill, but next to the city, looking both at the sea and the town, “far from everything, but next to transportation”, with quiet neighbours, “lonely but not too much”, “light but firm”, “original but comfortable” and, above all, conveniently priced.

After a long search, the structure of an unfinished big house nobody wanted to buy appeared in Florida hill. It had been built by the Spanish Sebastián Collado, who wanted to turn the third floor into a birdhouse and conceived the terrace as a heliport. But Mr. Sebastián Collado died in 1949 and his sons and eventual buyers were equally discouraged when it came to this crazy house full of stairs. So the big house remained abandoned and unfinished for many years.

The poet went to see that shabby construction. He liked it, but he thought it was too big. So he convinced the Velasco - Martner marriage to buy it in partnership. The latter kept the basement, the yard and the first two floors of one side of the house. Neruda kept from the ground to the fourth floor plus the tower, of the other side. “I ended up losing – he joked- I bought nothing but stairs and terraces”. The fact is he had a privileged view over the bay.

The poet took three years to finish and furnish the house. Doctor Francisco Velasco remembers he decorated it with old pictures of the port and a big portrait of Walt Whitman. One of the workers asked him if he was his father. “Yes, in poetry” – Neruda answered.

Some windows were shaped as ship clerestories. The biggest terrace became the dining room. The soundtracks of the films in the next Mauri theatre could be heard form there. Velasco remembers one occasion when Neruda went downstairs recommending to the couple the film projected at that moment. It sounded good, judging by the gunshots one could hear.

The house was opened by the poet with an unforgettable party on September 18th, 1961. Every guest was included in an “unforgettable merits list” that underlined the help they had given to build “La Sebastiana” out of an abandoned and old construction. Neruda chose the name “La Sebastiana” as homage to its first proprietor and builder.

Inspired by the occasion, Neruda wrote the poem “La Sebastiana”, later to be included in the book Plenos Poderes. Its first lines say: “I built the house. / First I made it from air. / Then I hung the flag in the air / and left it hanging/ from the sky, from the star/ from clarity and from darkness…”

That day, Sara Vial remembers, Neruda guided his guests to the tower. From there, with his spyglass, he presided over the whole port. He instigated his guests to look in certain direction, towards a house where a naked woman laid on the roof taking a sunbath. Nobody ever could see her. Maybe she appeared only for the poet, who assured he had discovered from there lots of secrets that belonged to him.

Neruda liked to spend New Year’s Eve in Valparaíso. “La Sebastiana” was a privileged watchtower to contemplate the port’s traditional fireworks show. There, he spent his last year, 1972, and saw the arrival of 1973.

Doctor Francisco Velasco tells that, short after the poet’s death, one morning, when he was arriving to La Sebastiana, he found the neighbourhood in turmoil. He was told something strange was going on in the house. Carefully, he went upstairs to check. He found a big eagle in the living room. He opened the window for the bird to get out, but he could never explain to himself how the eagle had got in. “Immediately, it came to my mind that time when Pablo confided that if there was another life, he would have liked to be an eagle -wrote doctor Velasco-. I told this to Matilde and Teruca Hamel. It was Pablo, they both answered at the same time. We’re sure”.

La Sebastiana -raided o searched after the military stroke o coup of 1973-, was restored in 1991 thanks to the support of Telefónica de España, which also made possible the acquisition of the Velasco - Martner marriage’s part of the house. The house was officially inaugurated that year in December. The gardens and entrance were opened in 1994 and in 1997, again with Telefónica de España ‘s support, a Cultural Centre was opened.