Plaza Sotomayor, Barrio Puerto & Muelle Prat Harbour Boat Tours Guide

Before climbing into the hills, every visit to Valparaíso should anchor itself in Barrio Puerto and Plaza Sotomayor, where Spanish conquistador Juan de Saavedra first sighted the bay in 1536 and where nineteenth-century merchant banks, shipping companies, and customs warehouses transformed a narrow rocky beach into the financial and naval capital of the South Pacific.

1. Plaza Sotomayor, the 1910 Armada Building & Héroes de Iquique

Opening directly onto the passenger pier of Muelle Prat, Plaza Sotomayor is framed by grand early-twentieth-century civic palaces built on land reclaimed from the sea:

• Edificio de la Armada de Chile (1910): Painted in brilliant sky blue and white with mansard roofs and French neoclassical pediments, the former Regional Intendancy (designed by architect Carlos Barroilhet for Chile's 1910 Centenary) serves as the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Navy.
• Monumento a los Héroes de Iquique (1886): Rising at the centre of the square above an underground vaulted crypt, this marble-and-bronze monument designed by French architect Norbert Maillart and sculptor Denys Puech honours Captain Arturo Prat Chacón and the crew of the wooden corvette Esmeralda, who perished on 21 May 1879 during the Naval Battle of Iquique in the War of the Pacific. Below the square, glass floor panels also reveal the buried stone pilings of Valparaíso's 1832 colonial customs wharf.

2. Muelle Prat Harbour Boat Tours (Paseos en Lancha)

Walk two minutes from Plaza Sotomayor onto the busy timber jetty of Muelle Prat, where skippers in peaked caps call out for passengers to fill traditional, brightly painted wooden motor launches (lanchas fleteras):

• What You See on the 30-to-40-Minute Bay Cruise: Once a boat fills (departing continuously from mid-morning until sunset), it chugs out across the calm waters of the inner harbour past the grey frigates and submarines of the Chilean Navy, towering container ships being unloaded by gantry cranes, giant floating dry docks, and colonies of huge South American sea lions (lobos marinos) barking on harbour buoys and breakwater rocks, all while giving you the best unobstructed wide-angle photograph of Valparaíso's forty-two hills rising above the water.

3. Barrio Puerto: Calle Serrano, Plaza Echaurren & Iglesia La Matriz (1842)

West of Plaza Sotomayor, follow Calle Serrano past the 1886 Ascensor Cordillera into Valparaíso's oldest quarter, Barrio Puerto. Stop at Plaza Echaurren (site of the city's first colonial market and the 1897 tavern Bar Liberty), admire the freshly restored 1924 brick-and-glass hall of Mercado Puerto, and walk two blocks inland to the Iglesia de La Matriz del Salvador (completed 1842, fourth church on the 1559 foundational site), where a seventeenth-century carved wooden Christ of the Agony gifted by King Philip II of Spain is venerated.