Valparaiso

Several inclined lifts laid in the nineteenth century still carry passengers. Wooden cars hang on cables and move by balancing against the car on the other side.

Paintings run along the stairways and walls so the whole route is covered. A rule holds that only walls the owner allows get painted.

Neruda put this house on a hill to keep the harbour below him. Each floor turns its windows a different way, giving several angles on the ships.

A small boat threads between moored cargo ships and naval vessels. Sea lions hauled onto the pier posts are seen from close up.

A narrow walk follows the hill edge with the harbour below the rail. Old mansions stand along the inner side of it.

Twenty murals painters put on these stairway walls in the 1970s survive. The colours fade, so every few years they are repainted as the artists intended.

It occupies a former naval academy on the hill and gathers records of sea battles. From its yard the harbour and the bay open in one view.

The building came down in an earthquake and was rebuilt and reopened. Fish is sold on the lower floor and the kitchens upstairs cook what was just bought.

Cars brought in during the 1950s still work a fixed route. Poles on the roof follow the overhead wire, so they run almost without sound.

Neruda built this house right at the sea and filled it with ship models and shells. He and his wife are buried in the yard, facing the water.

British and German merchants settled this hill, and a Lutheran spire and an Anglican church rise over its lanes. From the railing of Paseo Atkinson the commercial district's rooftops spread out below. A lift from Calle Prat at the foot skips the stair climb.

The blue navy headquarters closes off one flank, and the monument to the heroes of the Battle of Iquique stands in the centre. Arturo Prat lies in the crypt beneath it. The square ends at Muelle Prat, so the harbour boats are just beyond.

An Art Nouveau mansion atop Cerro Alegre, now the municipal fine arts museum. Chilean and European paintings of the 19th and 20th centuries hang room by room. Stepping out of the upper station of the El Peral lift puts you at its garden.

A Protestant burial ground set apart on Cerro Panteon for foreigners who were not Catholic. Headstones of British, German and American merchants and sailors still carry English and German inscriptions. Cemetery No. 1 lies next door, separated by one wall.

Chile's parliament sits here, not in the capital. It moved in 1990 with the return to civilian rule, into a vast gate-shaped concrete block in the eastern Almendral district. Lawmakers commuting weekly from Santiago remains a long-running argument.

A small fishing cove on the shore road to Vina del Mar, where boats unload their dawn catch. Sea lions and pelicans come right up to your feet after the scraps from cleaning. Buying straight from the fishermen beats the market price.

A white church in the oldest corner of the port district, on ground that once held the first chapel in town. Earthquakes and pirate raids levelled it several times, and today's church is 19th century. The surrounding streets are safer to walk by day.

A two-floor produce market on the flat ground of El Almendral. Downstairs, fruit, vegetables and beans are piled for sale; upstairs are the cheap kitchens the stallholders eat in. Hill residents shop here, so prices stay honest compared with tourist markets.

At midnight on 31 December fireworks go up from barges anchored in the bay. Every hillside fills with people, and few shows in South America are bigger. Rooms fill months in advance and buses stop that night, so lodging is booked well before.

In the fishing village of Quintay on the coast to the south, a whaling station that worked until 1967 survives as a museum. The ramp where whales were hauled up and the flensing sheds can be walked through. The cove restaurants just below fry the day's catch.

A small sandy beach below Playa Ancha hill, sheltered by a breakwater. The calm water draws neighbourhood children to swim in summer. This is the Pacific, so even in January the water is too cold for a long dip.