Qualla: Valparaíso https://qualla.com/valparaiso en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:39:57 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/h/valparaiso-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Valparaíso https://qualla.com/valparaiso Valparaíso: Introduction https://qualla.com/valparaiso/ Photo credit Tirpenne por E. Dumont, Public domain. Sailors had a nickname for it before the railroads and the cables and the UNESCO plaque: Little San Francisco. They meant the hills, the way the city seems to spill down forty-odd of them straight into the harbor, houses clinging to slopes too steep for streets. They meant the polyglot crowds, the British clubs and German schools and Italian newspapers all jostling along the waterfront. Valparaíso was the first great port a ship reached after rounding Cape Horn, and for the better part of a century the whole Pacific seemed to pass through its docks. Then the Panama Canal opened, the ships stopped coming, and the Jewel of the Pacific had to learn how to be something other than rich.

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Image: Tirpenne por E. Dumont | Public domain

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/h/valparaiso-wp/66jh-valpara-so-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Valparaíso: The Stairway City https://qualla.com/valparaiso/ Photo credit Nicolas Solop, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is almost no flat ground in Valparaíso. The narrow shelf along the water holds the banks, the customs houses, the naval headquarters that have stood here since 1817. Everything else goes up. To solve the problem of getting people from the plan to the cerros, the city built ...

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Image: Nicolas Solop | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/h/valparaiso-wp/66jh-valpara-so-the-stairway-city.mp3 0:06 2 full Valparaíso: Where the Ships Came First https://qualla.com/valparaiso/ Photo credit P R, CC BY 2.0. Juan de Saavedra sailed into the bay in 1536 and named it after his home village in Spain, Valparaíso de Arriba. For three centuries it stayed a hamlet of a few houses and a church, occasionally sacked by English privateers. Francis Drake raided it in 1578. Everything changed wit...

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Image: P R | CC BY 2.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/h/valparaiso-wp/66jh-valpara-so-where-the-ships-came-first.mp3 0:06 3 full Valparaíso: After the Canal https://qualla.com/valparaiso/ Photo credit Julia Sumangil, CC BY-SA 4.0. When the Panama Canal opened in 1914, captains no longer needed the long, dangerous passage past the Strait of Magellan. Traffic drained away. Wealthy families abandoned their hillside mansions, and the twentieth century became a slow retreat. The earthquakes did not help; the 19...

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Image: Julia Sumangil | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/h/valparaiso-wp/66jh-valpara-so-after-the-canal.mp3 0:06 4 full Valparaíso: The Fire and the Festival https://qualla.com/valparaiso/ Photo credit KenPugh, CC BY-SA 3.0. Living on these slopes has always carried risk. In early February 2024, a wildfire swept out of the hills above the city and through its dense neighborhoods with terrible speed. The official toll reached 136 dead, the deadliest fire in Chilean history and the worst disaster to st...

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Image: KenPugh | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/6/j/h/valparaiso-wp/66jh-valpara-so-the-fire-and-the-festival.mp3 0:06 5 full