Where to Stay in Valparaíso, Región de Valparaíso

What is Valparaíso known for?

Valparaíso is known for the tangle of steep hills, or cerros, that rise straight from its Pacific harbour in Chile. Brightly painted houses stack up the slopes, linked to the flat port below by a set of old funicular lifts, the ascensores. The mood is bohemian.

Artists and the open-air murals of The Open Sky Museum have long drawn on the colour of the cerros, while the working seaport and naval base keep the lower city tied firmly to the ocean.

What are the main landmarks in Valparaíso?

Valparaíso is defined by its funiculars, the ascensores that haul between the port and the cerros, among them Ascensor Concepción and the Polanco Lift. The hillsides carry La Sebastiana, the house museum of the poet Pablo Neruda, and Palacio Baburizza above the bay. Down by the water stand more.

The National Maritime Museum, the Monument to the Heroes of Iquique, and Parque Cultural de Valparaíso anchor the lower city, while The Open Sky Museum spreads its murals across the walls of the slopes.

What is the history of Valparaíso?

Valparaíso was founded in 1536, taking its name from Valparaíso de Arriba in the Castile-La Mancha region of Spain. It grew as a seaport. The natural harbour on the Pacific coast of Chile made the city a port of call for ships rounding the continent, and trade drew merchants and settlers who built up the flat port and the rising cerros behind it.

Maritime commerce shaped everything. As the port prospered, houses spread up the steep hills, and the funicular ascensores were built to link the harbour with the neighbourhoods climbing above it. Valparaíso became a major seaport and naval base of Chile, its fortunes tied to the sea traffic that passed its quays.

The bohemian culture of the cerros, the painted houses, and the murals now gathered as The Open Sky Museum all grew from that layered port history, giving the Valparaíso Region city a character built as much on its hills as on its harbour.

Where is Valparaíso?

Valparaíso sits on the Pacific coast of central Chile, west of the capital Santiago, in the Valparaíso Region. The city wraps a curving bay. A narrow flat strip holds the port, and behind it the steep cerros rise in an amphitheatre of hills, so that the neighbourhoods look down over the harbour and the open ocean beyond.

What is the climate of Valparaíso?

Valparaíso has a mild subtropical coastal climate, tempered by the Pacific that fronts this part of Chile. Summers stay warm and dry. Cooler, damper months bring the cloud that drifts in off the ocean and settles over the cerros, while the sea keeps the harbour city from the sharper swings felt further inland toward Santiago.

How do you get to Valparaíso?

Valparaíso is reached overland from Santiago, the Chilean capital lying inland to the east. The road runs down to the coast. Travellers cross from the interior to the Pacific shore of the Valparaíso Region, arriving at the harbour city where the funicular ascensores climb from the port up into the cerros above.