The claim
A rowdy, no-frills drinking den near Santiago's Mercado Central, trading since the 1890s and in the Benedetti family since 1916. President Arturo Alessandri supposedly called it a 'piojera', or flea-pit, in 1922, and the name stuck. Regulars down the terremoto, pipeño wine topped with pineapple ice cream, at crowded tables among politicians, artists and tourists.
What the records show
Nobody we can point to states 1896 except Spanish Wikipedia, which says the premises was already working as a bar by then. The bar's own account is different and stops short of a founding year: its website carried the line 'La Piojera, desde 1922' when it was archived on 7 December 2024, and the history page archived the next day has Carlos Benedetti Pini buying the place in 1916, the family running it ever since into a third generation, and earlier names — Santiago Antiguo, Bar Democrático — before the present one arrived in 1922, when President Arturo Alessandri walked into the rough little cantina and asked what flea-pit he had been brought to. The sign itself went up only in 1981. The live site is now an ordering page with no history on it. The Santiago press dates the house from 1896 in passing, writing of 130 years of history in 2026. Recent status not re-verified.
| Year | What | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1896 | Claimed founding | The pub |
| 1916 | First record of a drinking house here | Wikipedia |
What to look for inside
- Named after President Alessandri's 1922 insult (tradition)
- Famous for the terremoto drink
- Declared a 'Monumento de los Sentimientos de la Nación' (2003)
Visiting
La Piojera is in Santiago, Chile, at Calle Aillavilú, near Mercado Central, Santiago. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.
Sources
- es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Piojera
- www.cnnchile.com/pais/la-piojera-se-despide-de-santiago-negociaciones-con-mut-y-planes-de-apertura-de-un-nuevo-local-en-2026/
- www.meganoticias.cl/nacional/525762-la-piojera-se-expande-nuevo-local-en-mall-tras-130-anos-de-historia-29-06-2026.html
- www.meganoticias.cl/nacional/499916-la-piojera-se-va-de-santiago-centro-nueva-sucursal-mut-dcv-pdp-24-9-2025.html
- web.archive.org/web/20241207133324/https://www.lapiojera.cl/
- web.archive.org/web/20241208032937/https://www.lapiojera.cl/historia/
Know something we don’t?Suggest a correctionLast checked Sept 2026
Run this pub? There is a badge for it
Free to put on your own site, no permission needed. It shows what the pub claims and what the records support, and it changes when the data does.
How to use it, and how to change what it says — if you have a document we have not seen, we would like to read it.
