The art and colors of Valparaíso, Chile

In the prison where a few decades ago around two thousand prisoners of the military dictatorship were crammed together, today there is dancing. The old prison in Valparaíso, which witnessed torture during the Pinochet years, was transformed into a cultural space, the Ex Cárcel Parque Cultural. This is just one of the many initiatives that have transformed this Chilean port city into a haven for artists and exponentially increasing the number of visitors. There is no shortage of those who decide to stay for good.

When the 20th century arrived, Valparaíso was one of the navels of the world. Chile’s main port, 140 km from Santiago, was an obligatory stop for ships making the complicated crossing between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Immigrants from various parts of the world put down roots there, which made neighborhoods like Cerro Alegre as cosmopolitan as those in New York.

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The decay began with an earthquake. The 1906 earthquake was so overwhelming that it ended up boosting a neighboring city: many residents, after losing everything, moved to the surrounding area. This is how Viña del Mar grew.

What the tremor did not take, modernity swallowed. The opening of the Panama Canal, in 1914, was at the same time one of the greatest feats of human engineering and a turning point in Valpo’s port vocation and cosmopolitan wealth. From then on, decadence continued. And didn’t Valparaíso find its charm in it?

By padchas, Shutterstock.com

The city is full of colorful houses, buildings spread across 40 hills that seem to hug the Pacific and which are reached by centuries-old elevators – and which still carry four million passengers annually. It didn’t take long for Valparaíso to become a haven for artists. The most legendary of them, Pablo Neruda, wrote:

“Valparaíso, what nonsense you are, how crazy, crazy port, what a head with hills, disheveled, you haven’t finished combing your hair.”

Neruda captured the essence of the city like no one else. Valparaíso is not pretty and tidy, but messy and disheveled, like a head that hasn’t been combed. In other words, born ready to shine in the hipster era. And if the 1960s and 1970s made Valpa’s nightlife famous, it was only in the 21st century, when Unesco declared the historic center of Valparaíso a World Heritage Site, that the city reestablished some of its lost glory.

A few years after the title, investments began. Different governments have already thought about the city’s tourism, each in their own way. Around 80 million dollars have been spent since then, money that aims to improve the city’s tourist structure, but also reinforce Valparaíso as the most artistic city, the most creative stronghold in Chile. For the local government, tourism in Valparaíso has to be about this cultural identity, and not exactly about tourist attractions. The strategy has worked.

Brazilians, for example, arrive in droves. And, like other tourists, they hunt for graffiti. “Do you know where the staircase that resembles the keys of a piano is?” a Brazilian woman asked our guide, who pointed in another direction. Not far away, several people formed a queue – they were waiting to take photos on another staircase, also painted by artists. Designs of the most varied types have made Valparaíso an even more sought-after destination. And there are plenty of people who spend hours searching for a panel or location they saw on Instagram.

The works are not just by Chilean artists, but by people from all over the world. There are cases of artists who spend time in the city, paint walls everywhere, sometimes in exchange for accommodation, and then move on. You can hunt for street art on your own, but anyone interested in the subject can take a tour.

Created by the New Yorker who has lived in Valparaíso for a decade, Valpostreetart promises to take visitors “to underground culture, to the alleys and staircases, showing a part of the city that few people see”. As our group had little time, we didn’t take this tour, but we walked the streets accompanied by a Chilean guide. It was worth the trip. Anyone wanting a more detailed, art-focused tour should book at least one day in advance. The meeting point is Plaza Aníbal Pinto.

It’s not just street art that has grown in recent years. The number of restaurants has increased, as have the number of hotels and inns. Nothing that would change the way, as Neruda would say, disheveled from Valparaíso. Fortunately. I was in the city on two occasions. The first in 2012 and the last now, in 2018 – in both cases I got a card there in July. If some differences are obvious, the best one was in my relationship with the city, something much more personal and which has little to do with the changes of the last six years: I confess that I liked Valparaíso much more in this second visit.

After the first visit, I wrote here on 360 that I had found the city interesting, but that I expected more – and I cited the report of a journalist who hadn’t liked the experience and wanted to run away. Six years later, as I walked the streets, went down elevators and saw graffiti here and there, I realized that I was very wrong. As Neruda said, Valparaíso is nonsense. And that can only be in a good way.

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