10 Photos That Will Make You Want To Go To Chile’s City Of Colour

Taryn is AWOL's founding editor. She previously edited Beat Magazine…
Valparaíso is Chile’s biggest container and passenger port. Located 120 kms north-west of the country’s capital, the city is truly a beacon of Chilean culture, full to the brim with festivals, music and its famed street art. Such spirit carries with it a certain vibrancy, and the city proudly shows its colour on its sleeves with vast murals adorning its city walls.
Everything has colour woven through it, from the paint on the walls to the bright green busses to the active funicular railways that cart you up the hills (a much better option than walking, trust us). The vivid town is actually a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its architectural and cultural legacy. It’s said that sailors would leave leftover ship paint in the port town, which the locals started using to decorate the city. Built up on to the steep hillsides overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Valpo (as it’s known to locals) is pretty much everything that is right in the world.
Here’s ten photos to prove it.
It’s actually impossible to shift your eyes in any direction without feeling the pressing need to photograph it all. All. Of. It.

Honestly, you can’t even avoid it a little bit. Stop trying.

This car is boldly refusing to let the buildings have all the fun.

Play us a song, piano man.

Until now, I never realised that regular buildings are so boring.

Putting the “fun” in funicular.

Valpo drawn on the walls of Valpo. This is some next-level meta-ness.
Even stock-standard practical windows aren’t safe from the art attack.

Valpo doesn’t subscribe to our narrow-minded view of bathrooms.

I’m pretty sure it’s actually just a huge Crayola ad.

(Lead image: Boris G/Flickr)
Taryn is AWOL's founding editor. She previously edited Beat Magazine and has contributed to Junkee, Beat and The Brag. She has travelled to over 30 countries and countless cities, leaving plenty of evidence on her Instagram @ninettey.