Una escuela, un palacio, una nación: La arquitectura del liceo Pedro Montt en Valparaíso como representación simbólica. Chile, 1918–1919

This article offers a micro-historical and archaeological reading of the Pedro Montt Lyceum building in Valparaíso, Chile. Beginning with a formal analysis of the school's architecture, it reconstructs the historical conditions of the building's production and presents an analytical interpretation that uncovers the material traces of political, social, and cultural modernization projects embedded within it. The metaphor of the palace, coined by the citizens themselves, suggests that the lyceum was perceived as a school only in functional terms, while also signaling broader public awareness that the building carried a symbolic message. The article concludes that the lyceum serves as an allegorical representation of a civilizing and Europeanizing vision of modernity, as imagined by the local elite during the period of the Parliamentary Republic (1891–1920).