Between memories of Antiquity and aspirations of modernity. Uses of Greece and Rome in residences of the Chilean elite at the end of the 19th century

Abstract

During the second half of the 19th century, the Chilean elite aspired to modernize the country, which meant distancing itself from its colonial past. To do this, he conceived Western Europe as a cultural reference to imitate, ethically and aesthetically appropriating the principles that could represent said aspiration. In this context, some families developed a historicist architectural desire for palatial residences in the Central Valley of Chile. This article reviews cases of residences that imitated and expressed the admiration of said elite for ancient Greece and Rome. From the perspective of classical reception studies, its analysis offers some insights into what motives, moments and topics configured the imaginary of the nineteenth-century Chilean elite about Classical Antiquity and how these residences became an expression of the memory that said society forged on the Greco-Latin past, based on its aspirations for modernity and belonging to Western culture.