Chile Guide
Valparaíso, Viña and the Central Coast
Valparaíso
Valparaíso es un montón, un racimode casas locasPablo Neruda
Spread over an amphitheatre of hills encircling a wide bay, Valparaíso is perhaps the most memorable city in Chile. Its most striking feature is the array of houses – a mad, colourful tangle of them tumbling down the hills to a narrow shelf of land below. Few roads make it up these gradients and most people get up and down on the city's fifteen "lifts" or ascensores, a collection of ancient-looking funiculars that slowly haul you up to incredible viewpoints. The lower town, known as El Plan, named after Pedro Montt's reconstruction plan after the 1906 earthquake, is a series of narrow, traffic-choked streets packed with shops, banks, offices and abandoned warehouses, crowded round the quays and port that once made Valparaíso's fortune.
The ascensores
Most of Valparaíso's fifteen ascensores, or funicular "lifts", were built between 1883 and 1916 to provide a link between the lower town and the new residential quarters that were spreading up the hillsides. Appearances would suggest that they've scarcely been modernized since, but despite their rickety frames and alarming noises they've so far proved safe and reliable. What's more, nearly all drop off passengers at a panoramic viewpoint, usually atop their namesake hillside. The ascensores operate every few minutes from 7am to 11pm, and cost CH$70 to $120 one-way, usually less going down than up.
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