It was a gathering place for many left-wing and progressive cultural and political figures during the Popular Unity years, the period associated with the election of Salvador Allende, a Socialist, to Chile’s presidency in 1970.

His regime began to detain thousands of political activists, students, workers, trade unionists, and any other subversive individuals who spoke out against his military government.

[6] Villa Grimaldi was taken over by the DINA, Pinochet's secret police, under Colonel Manuel Contreras and became an interrogation center under the cover of an electrical utility company.

[7] Victims included Carlos Lorca, the British physician Sheila Cassidy, the MAPU leader Juan Maino, the CEPAL diplomat Carmelo Soria, and future Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who was tortured with her mother.

According to the Rettig Report, they were kept in several different living situations: The tower, a tall structure containing ten narrow spaces measuring 70 x 70 centimetres and two metres high in which multiple prisoners were held.

Agents tied naked prisoners to a bare metal bed known as la parrilla, or the grill, and shock devices were attached to sensitive parts of the body such as the lips or genitals.

[5] Carmen Rojas, a Chilean female revolutionary, is one prisoner whose detention records provide insight into the torture experienced by women at Villa Grimaldi.

One instance documented in Rojas’s narratives describes an interaction between her and male torturers, who force her to undress, then laugh as they electrocute her and menstrual blood drips down her legs.

[13] The property that houses Villa Grimaldi was once privately owned, featuring a main estate and several smaller buildings, including a water tower, barracks for domestic help, and a pool.

There is seating directly in front of the site wall, situated intentionally to provoke an understanding of the "different affective space this memorial produces as a place of contemplation with no barriers, in private, in solace".

[17] Another feature of the park is the Memory Room, which contains mementos, black and white photos, childhood toys, journal entries and other personal items of the individual lives whose last known locations were being detained in Villa Grimaldi.