Valparaíso Hills & Funiculars

Valparaíso is a busy Pacific port city in central Chile, about 120 kilometres northwest of the capital, Santiago. Its historic quarter is famous for steep hills called cerros, crowded with brightly painted houses, and for old funiculars called ascensores that carry people up the slopes. The historic quarter became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.

The city's name comes from a village in Spain, Valparaíso de Arriba, where the first Spanish ship captain to name it was born. Today Valparaíso is also the seat of Chile's National Congress and the home of the Chilean Navy's headquarters.

A port at the end of the world

Spanish sailors reached the bay in 1536. In the second half of the 1800s Valparaíso became one of the most important stops for ships travelling between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Strait of Magellan. European immigrants arrived in large numbers, and sailors nicknamed it "Little San Francisco" and the "jewel of the Pacific". The city got Latin America's oldest stock exchange and the continent's first volunteer fire department. When the Panama Canal opened in 1914, far fewer ships came this way, and the city declined for a time.

Hills, colours and ascensores

Because the flat land beside the bay is narrow, people built homes up the hillsides in a maze of cobbled alleys and stairways. The funiculars climb the slopes; the oldest, Ascensor Concepción, began running in 1883. Between 2000 and 2015 artists, tourists and cultural entrepreneurs came to the old hill districts, and thousands of visitors now come every month to see the colourful buildings and wall art.

On the globe

The model shows colourful houses stacked up the steep hills above the Pacific harbour.