The secret stories behind Santiago’s Los Dominicos Craft Centre

On a sunny spring day in Santiago, I’m strolling around Los Dominicos Craft Centre.

It’s a village of local Chilean artisans, with everything from lapis lazuli jewellery to knitted ear-flap headwear and ponchos to earthenware items for sale.

It’s pleasant to hear the tap of hammers and quiet chatter of locals, and a place to look for relevant souvenirs and take-homes. There are nearly 200 shops and workshops.

I sit and sip a little coffee at one of the outdoor cafes with umbrellas, and enjoy the big aviary populated only with showy chickens and pigeons.

With a few hours to spare in Santiago, Los Dominicos Craft Centre is a nice place to come, particularly at weekends.

I suggest this as, adjacent to the artisan village in these old monastery buildings is a weekend farmer’s market, where locals sell their produce.

There are many types of peaches, stands of cherries, avocados and all sorts of nuts.

A local tells me that Santiago has a Mediterranean climate similar to Perth in Australia. (It’s a surprising coincidence that he should mention Perth, isn’t it.)

I buy a couple of peaches and settle under one of the many flowering jacaranda trees to enjoy them.

Los Dominicos park is just beyond the produce market and I stroll a lap before noticing a Royal Enfield motorcycle parked outside the twin-towered Los Dominicos church. It’s a spotless Classic 500 Bullet (for those who care).

A man comes out of the church and in a spattering of my thin Spanish and his bit of English we establish we are fellow Enfield owners.

He enthusiastically ushers me into the church, where what I guess to be his extended family are celebrating a christening. A whole community is here to witness the moment.

I’m greeted with a stream of “holas”.

I feel privileged to have been drawn temporarily into this family, but everyone is welcome to celebrate such an event … a child welcomed into the church, the faith, and a modern chapter of an embedded history.

Santiago is a city of 8 million people in this country of 20 million. Christianity is strong. Most recent figures show that 88 per cent of Chileans identify as Christian; 66 per cent of them Roman Catholic.

Los Dominicos church (also known as San Vicente Ferrer Church) was part of a monastery, on land originally given to the female Spanish conquistador Ines de Suarez by the governor of Chile, Pedro de Valdivia.

Ines (or Agnes to us) was an unusual woman — a sole female among the male conquistadors.

Born in Plasencia, Spain, in 1507, she travelled with Valdivia’s soldiers to invade Chile and was here for the founding of Santiago in 1541. She was the first Spanish woman to settle in Chile, having initially come to find her missing husband.

At that time, Spanish women weren’t allowed to travel to South America alone, but Agnes obtained royal permission, having been supported by two witnesses who confirmed her Christianity. She promised to take her niece, so as not to be a woman alone.

She sailed in 1537, found her husband had died in Peru, and stayed and worked as a seamstress to support herself. Agnes’ mother had taught her the needle skills that enabled her to stay and sustain herself.

It was in Peru that she fell for Valdivia, and also became one of his soldiers (and, apparently, a fearless and somewhat bloodthirsty one, who also treated her companions’ wounds and cared for them).

The party set out for Chile in 1540, with Agnes as Valdivia’s girlfriend, despite his marriage to Marina Ortiz de Gaete, who was still in Spain.

After Valdivia left Peru in 1549, she married Conquistador Rodrigo de Quiroga, and they were together for 30 years and served as joint governors.

Agnes died aged 74, having outlived all the conquerors with whom she’d arrived in Chile.

This monastery land in Santiago passed many hands, finally to the Cranisbro family, who became the benefactors of the Dominican order that made its monastery beside the church. It dates to 1808.

The church has two copper domes on top of those two towers, which were built in memorial of two Cranisbro children. It was declared a National Monument in 1983.

After the christening, when new family and friends have left, I sit quietly at the back of the church to write this.

It is a long, thin, off-white stucco cave, with arches, stone floors and dark beams. Churches everywhere remain oases of coolness, calm and contemplation for me.

And then I burst back out into sunlight, to stand by the huge Christmas tree in the park, covered in baubles.

Another person strolls up to the tree and stands near me. He is quietly singing a Christmas carol to himself, filtered by his beautiful voice and deep conviction into a perfect-pitch monastic chant.