VALPARAISO, Chile -- Santiago may be Chile's capital but the country's cultural centre is Valparaiso, two hours and 120 km to the northwest. While Santiago is inward-looking and hemmed in by mountains, historically cosmopolitan Valparaiso is more open to the world atop hills that form a natural amphitheatre with vast views over the Pacific. Colourfully painted houses throng steep slopes and form the audience for a ballet of cranes unloading plump vessels stacked high with containers.
Settled by Spanish colonists around 1540 on a narrow strip of level seaside land, the city grew rapidly after Chile gained independence from Spain in 1810, sprawling up ever steeper slopes. The wealthy needed a convenient method to reach hillside mansions, and the poor to reach their shanties yet higher still. Towards the end of the 19th century a solution was found in the construction of ascensores or "elevators" -- funicular railways that still crawl up the often shockingly steep slopes.
Around half of the original 30 or so remain in use today, zigzagging across hillsides and lacing the city together. They provide novel links in improvised walking routes that alternate between the city's sea-level World Heritage-listed business centre and high-level residential terraces with panoramic sea views.
Valparaiso was designated Santiago's official port in 1544 and the city grew rich on exports of wheat and saltpetre, and on servicing vessels rounding Cape Horn. British and German immigrants founded substantial banks and trading companies and opened South America's first stock exchange.
By the end of the 19th century the city was one of the continent's most important ports, and today it retains a well-planned grid of sober, neo-classical buildings at sea level, while its residential districts sprawl upwards in relative disorder, with streets that wind up the hillsides or snake around contours.
A profusion of brightly painted houses tumbles prettily down the slopes, and the ascensores, whose stations and cars are often just as colourful, are often lost between them, their entrances hidden among the labyrinth of streets and stairways. Sometimes the stations teeter against the skyline as if about to plummet into the densely clustered buildings below. Open on one side, they sometimes resemble boathouses deposited on hilltops by the ultimate in tsunamis.
In Valparaiso cerro is the word for both hill and district, and neighbouring Cerro Concepcion and Cerro Alegre, above the heart of the city and the docks, boast a cluster of ascensores. Here, steep Templeman and Almirante Montt streets are home to bohemian cafes and restaurants beloved by Valparaiso's university students, and just east the upper station of the Ascensor Reina Victoria of 1902, named for the British queen, is a battered, yellow-painted shed of corrugated iron on an isolated high point reached by an elevated wooden walkway.
Inside there's a heavy turnstile, but payment is at the lower station. The fare is a mere 100 pesos (about 20¢) but then the distance to be travelled is only 40 metres, although at a hair-raising 57 degree angle. An attendant slides back the door to a rickety, wood-lined metal cage holding a maximum of seven people, then closes and locks it.
Two cars on parallel cogged tracks are joined by hawsers that loop over large steel wheels at the upper station, and halfway through the rattling descent the partner car passes, looking like an improbable garden shed raised on slender scaffolding with a sharply angled base and tiny wheels.
The exit is to the beginnings of the well-preserved evidence of Valparaiso's former prosperity, and the walk east along Cumming and Esmeralda is past the imposing frontages of banks and the statue-topped offices of El Mercurio, a newspaper in continuous publication since 1827. The large banking halls are worth visiting even if you have no need to change money, their original luxurious interiors of panelled wood, Carrara marble and stained glass still intact.
The privately owned Ascensor Concepcion is the oldest, opened in 1883, its entrance is hidden down a narrow passage. It climbs swiftly twice as far back up the hillside, but at a more gentle 45 degrees, to where a wooden upper station gives onto a terrace with views down to slim grey warships of the Chilean navy at anchor.
Walking west it's easy to get lost among the winding streets even with a map, although that's part of the pleasure. Up, down, and sideways stretch rows of two and three-storey houses in pink, purple, lemon yellow or green, with equally gaudy bougainvillea and other pretty flowering shrubs spilling over garden walls. Artful murals on empty walls add further colour. Some are playful, some political, and some even depict Valparaíso's signature transportation.
The route takes the Pasaje Bavestrello, a staircase that climbs through an apartment building, passes between houses, crosses a bridge, climbs again, and gives on to further streets whose steep snaking turns force houses into unlikely wafer-like shapes. The Palacio Baburizza near the top of Ascensor El Peral is an Art Nouveau masterpiece of 1916 that is worth coming to see in its own right; all chequered panels, dancing figures in relief, ornate hanging lanterns and organic columns.
El Peral, of 1902, drops with a whoosh to where a short walk through the city's administrative heart and past bustling markets and seafood restaurants leads to Ascensor Artilleria, where, money ready, you discover that payment is at the top for once. It was originally opened in 1894 to take students up to a naval college.
The car is large, the track visible through gaps in the floorboards, the slope gentle, and the ride a relatively long cliffside 175 metres, giving generous views across the harbour throughout.
No two sources agree on the numbers of funiculars still operating in Valparaíso, and even local people seem unable to keep up with their closures. Residents may love their city's icons, but they're actually riding the minibuses that storm noisily up the steep slopes blowing clouds of black exhaust.
Approval for the first ascensor was given in 1877, but this novel solution to the problems of inconvenient geography arrived only just in time for the city's decline. The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 made many of the long and risky voyages round Cape Horn unnecessary, more freight crossed North America by rail, and the new steamships preferred ports with easy access to coal.
Valparaiso is now officially recognised as the Cultural Capital of Chile, and much investment in renovation of its historic buildings is beginning to revive tourism.
As residents know only too well, life in Valparaiso has its ups and downs.
IF YOU GO TO CHILE
MORE INFORMATION
For more on travel to Chile, see tourismchile.com. Valparaiso's official tourism site has its own informative pages at ciudadvalparaiso.cl. Several companies operate luxury buses from Santiago's Alameda terminal with departures every few minutes for around 3,500 pesos ($7). The city sits on 42 hills and while there are frequent minibus services, about 12 working ascensores, and taxis, there's no avoiding a steep climb or descent on foot from time to time. Ascensores are 100 to 300 pesos (20¢-60¢) per journey. Children pay full price unless small enough to be carried through the turnstiles, in which case they travel for free.
DINING AND LODGING
It's best to stay uphill in Cerros Alegre or Concepcion, where evenings are quiet. There is a wide choice of restaurants, and numerous hostels for the budget travellers who have been leading the return of tourism to Valparaiso (see hostelworld.com and similar sites). Many are in historic buildings and have comfortable apartments and cheaper shared rooms, such as the highly recommended Luna Sonrisa (lunasonrisa.cl) whose helpful owner is also the author of Footprint's Chile. Apartments can be rented through sites such as apartmentrental-valparaiso.cl. The Valparaiso tourism site lists upmarket boutique hotels in historic buildings.
