Cerro Alegre & Cerro Concepción Guide: Street Art, Paseos & Mansions

Rising side by side immediately behind Plaza Sotomayor and Plaza Aníbal Pinto, Cerro Alegre ("Merry Hill") and Cerro Concepción form the core of Valparaíso's 2003 UNESCO World Heritage Site. Beginning in the 1820s and 1830s, British, German, and French shipping merchants, engineers, and consular families escaped the crowded port flatlands to build flower-filled Victorian and neo-Gothic residences along the upper cliff edges, creating a neighbourhood of panoramic balcony walks (paseos), Protestant churches, and labyrinthine staircases that today showcase Chile's most celebrated street murals.

1. Cerro Alegre: Paseo Yugoslavo, Palacio Baburizza & Pasaje Bavestrello

Start your walk at Plaza Justicia behind Plaza Sotomayor and ride the 1902 Ascensor El Peral fifty-two metres up the cliff to Paseo Yugoslavo on Cerro Alegre:

• Palacio Baburizza (Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes, 1916): Dominating Paseo Yugoslavo with its copper-domed turrets, timbered gables, and wrought-iron balconies, this Art Nouveau and Art Deco mansion was designed by Italian architects Renato Schiavon and Arnaldo Barison and purchased in 1925 by Croatian nitrate and shipping magnate Pascual Baburizza. Declared a National Historical Monument in 1979, it houses Valparaíso's Municipal Museum of Fine Arts, featuring nineteenth-century seascapes of old Valparaíso by Thomas Somerscales alongside Chilean masters; check the museum website for current exhibition hours.
• Pasaje Bavestrello & Plazuela San Luis: Duck through the vaulted tunnel passage of Pasaje Bavestrello (cutting directly through the middle of a residential apartment building) to emerge on lively Calle Urriola and Calle Almirante Montt, where the rainbow-painted steps of the Escalera Colores climb past murals by local collectives such as Un Kolor Distinto (Sammy Espinoza and Cynthia Aguilera).

2. Cerro Concepción: Anglican & Lutheran Churches, Paseo Atkinson & Paseo Gervasoni

Crossing Calle Urriola brings you seamlessly onto neighbouring Cerro Concepción without losing elevation:

• Catedral Anglicana Saint Paul's (1858) & Iglesia Luterana (1897): Along Calle Pilcomayo and Calle Abtao stand two National Monuments that testify to nineteenth-century Valparaíso's cosmopolitan tolerance: Saint Paul's Anglican Church (built in 1858 with a historic pipe organ donated in memory of Queen Victoria) and the brick-towered Lutheran Church of the Holy Cross (1897), the first Protestant church in South America permitted to erect a bell tower.
• Paseo Atkinson, Pasaje Beethoven (Piano Stairs) & Paseo Gervasoni: Stroll the row of pastel 1886 Brighton-style houses along Paseo Atkinson, snap a photo on the black-and-white keyboard steps of Pasaje Beethoven, and continue along Paseo Gervasoni (home to the Casa Mirador de Lukas cartoon museum and the upper station of the 1883 Ascensor Concepción) into the mosaic-and-mural cul-de-sac of Pasaje Gálvez.