Valparaíso

The Picunche, farmers of the central valley, were the first identifiable people on the bay. Spanish ships first arrived in 1536 with the Santiaguillo, a supply vessel for Diego de Almagro's expedition. After independence it became the base of the new Chilean navy, which has had its headquarters here since 1817, and the town grew quickly as a port of call for ships passing between the Atlantic and the Pacific through the Strait of Magellan. It supplied the California gold rush and drew immigrants from Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy.

British merchants settled on Cerro Alegre and Cerro Concepción, and the city gained Latin America's oldest stock exchange, the continent's first volunteer fire brigade, Chile's first public library and El Mercurio de Valparaíso, the oldest Spanish-language newspaper still published. The first funicular, the Concepción, opened in 1883, and by the late 19th century the city had more than 160,000 people, spreading houses up the steep hills. An earthquake on 16 August 1906 killed nearly 3,000 people, and the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 cut the shipping on which the city lived.

The port was rebuilt with large land reclamation between 1910 and 1930. On the morning of the 1973 coup the navy captured Valparaíso. Congress moved into a new building in the city in 1990, and in 2003 the historic quarter was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Fire has struck repeatedly: a brush fire in April 2014 destroyed 2,800 homes and killed 16 people, and in early February 2024 a huge brush fire burned through Valparaíso and central Chile, killing at least 131 people.

Valparaíso has a bohemian identity of its own. Artists, musicians and street painters have made its hills an open-air gallery of murals, and the jumble of painted houses, stairways and lanes that earned the city its nickname, the Jewel of the Pacific, was the reason for its listing as a World Heritage Site. In 1996 the World Monuments Fund named its funiculars among the world's 100 most endangered historic treasures; 16 survive of about 30 built since 1883, and since 2022 the city council has managed those owned by the regional government.

Pablo Neruda, who kept houses in Santiago and at Isla Negra, also had La Sebastiana on Cerro Bellavista, and the city's poetry, music and nightlife draw students from its universities and visitors from Santiago. The British past survives in the churches and architecture of the oldest hills.

The New Year's Eve fireworks over the bay, Año Nuevo en el Mar, are described as the biggest in Latin America and draw about a million spectators. Football loyalty belongs to Santiago Wanderers, one of the oldest clubs in the country, recognised in 2007 as part of the city's intangible heritage. The trolleybuses, running since 1952, are treated as an emblem of the city too. Residents call themselves porteños, people of the port.

The commune of Valparaíso had 284,938 inhabitants at the 2024 census. With Viña del Mar, Concón, Quilpué and Villa Alemana it forms Greater Valparaíso, the second-largest urban area in Chile, with about 950,000 people. The city is the capital of the Valparaíso Region and the seat of the National Congress, and since 2024 its mayor has been Camila Nieto Hernández.

The port remains central to the economy. It handles container traffic, copper and fruit exports, and receives about 50 cruise ships and 150,000 passengers a season, though San Antonio, to the south, now moves more containers, and port revenues go to the national treasury rather than the city. Government, the navy, universities and tourism provide much of the rest of the city's work.

Most people live on the hills, climbing home by stairway, bus or funicular from the flat plan where they work and shop, while many commute by train or bus to Viña del Mar. The economic decline of the old centre, crime, housing in fire-prone ravines on the upper hills, and recovery from the wildfires of 2024 are the main current issues.

The dish most associated with Valparaíso is the chorrillana, popularly believed to have originated here: a heaped platter of chips topped with strips of beef, fried onions and eggs, made for sharing over beer or wine in the port's old bars and late at night. The coast supplies the rest of the city's table: seafood empanadas, machas a la parmesana (surf clams baked with parmesan), and fresh fish, served in restaurants along the bay and in neighbouring Viña del Mar.

Everyday lunch is found in the markets. The Mercado El Cardonal in El Almendral sells fruit and vegetables from the valleys inland, and simple restaurants on its upper floor serve set lunches to traders and shoppers. Street stalls sell empanadas de pino, baked beef turnovers, and sopaipillas, fried dough that in central Chile includes pumpkin.

The hilltop quarters of Cerro Alegre and Cerro Concepción have the city's cafés and more ambitious restaurants, many in old merchants' houses with views over the harbour. Wine comes from the Casablanca valley on the road to Santiago, known for Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay.