Sky Costanera Review (Santiago, Chile): Worth It?

Sky Costanera, found atop the 62-story skyscraper known as Gran Torre Santiago, is one of the biggest tourist attractions in the city.

But is it really worth it to visit this observation deck?

In this article, I will break down the experience and tell you everything you need to know!

Sky Costanera background

Gran Torre Santiago is second tallest building in Latin America and the fifth tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere as of early 2023.

At 62 stories, this observation deck is high but still a pretty far cry from some of the tallest buildings in the world like the Burj Khalifa that has an observation deck at levels 124 and 125.

Still, ever since the observation deck opened up in 2015 it’s been a popular destination since it still is one of the highest decks in the Southern Hemisphere and Santiago is surrounded by beautiful mountains, which are perfect to admire from a building like this.

Getting there

The biggest thing to know about visiting Sky Costanera is that you don’t enter through the main lobby of the high-rise.

Instead, you need to find the entrance to Sky Costanera down in the mall area. It’s the largest shopping mall in Latin America, so the mall is impossible to miss!

The observation deck is open basically every day so you can pretty much always assume that it’s going to be open when you visit — don’t be turned off by the locked doors of the actual skyscraper if you encounter them.

Once you enter the mall, you may need to head down an escalator and you should see signs for Sky Costanera. If you don’t know where to go, just ask someone working at the mall and they will point you in the right direction.

You can purchase your tickets online or you can purchase them in person.

The tickets I saw online were associated with some type of additional tour and so I decided to just wait until we arrived in person to purchase our tickets.

Unfortunately, they did not have an option for entering twice in one day which would’ve been fantastic because I would’ve loved to have come back close to sunset.

But the tickets were only about US$15 per person which was a pretty reasonable price in my opinion.

Right next to the ticketing counter is security.

The agent “helping” us through security did not look like he cared too much for his job but we got through soon enough. They allowed me to bring my camera with a 300mm zoom lens which was nice because sometimes those big zoom lenses can be a problem.

Then it was just a matter of waiting for the elevator. One of the elevators was out of service so we had to wait for only one to be available.

I don’t think they send it down until they have enough people to fill it up so we had to wait about 12 minutes to enter the elevator which was the only drawback of the experience.

Once the elevator arrived and we loaded up, a staff member accompanied us up to the observation deck and he gave an intro in Spanish that I only partially understood.

For me, the whole reason of coming up here was to check out the mountains and I did not leave disappointed.

I’ve never seen mountains this tall before and Sky Costanera was the perfect place to get a good view of them! If only I could’ve been hiking up there!

You’ll be relieved to know that there are bathrooms up there in case you need to go.

You can find informational panels all around the indoor observation deck which can help you get a sense of what you’re looking at. I’d recommend taking a look at a few of them because otherwise you might miss out on some details!

Once you check out the indoor observation deck then you should head up to the open sky area upstairs. Just look for the sign to the Open Sky escalator.

At the top of the escalator, you’ll notice a photo booth where you can get some cool souvenir photos. That’s not really our thing so we just made our way to the deck.

It felt a lot cooler with the ceiling open which was really nice.

I thought the buildings top façade was pretty interesting looking and I have not seen many skyscrapers quite like this one, although the exterior does somewhat resemble Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, California

Since you’re only going up one floor, the views are more or less the same but it’s still nice to take another circle around the deck.

If you’re visiting around a holiday, they may have special decorations set up. In our case, Valentine’s Day had just passed.

It is hard to get the glare out of a lot of the photos so you may be dealing with a lot of that depending on the time of day.

For that reason, photos farther away from the glass tend to come out better.

I believe that companies can pay for special events up here which I think would be an awesome venue.

After we made our round, it was time to head back down and check out some of the stuff that we missed like this awesome model skyscraper.

They also have a café known as Sky 300 Bar & Coffee that you can settle into if you work up an appetite or need a pick me up.

They also had a couple of souvenir stands set up with one selling some pretty cool leather goods and wooden objects.

When you are ready to head back down, just find the exit line and wait around until the next elevator goes down which could be several minutes.

The elevator is going to spit you out on the upper floor of the mall so that in order for you to leave you’ll have to walk past as many shops as possible!

Final word

Sky Costanera in Santiago, Chile, is not even close to one of the tallest observation decks in the world. But as far as Latin America goes, it’s way up there.

For me, visiting the observation deck wasn’t so much about the height and it was more about just getting great views of the huge mountains that surround Santiago.

I wish that they allowed you to come back during a later time in the day but I did enjoy my visit and thought that it was worth the time and money at only about $15 USD per adult.