Abstract

Despite its singular urban condition, its international appeal, and being the second largest city in Chile, lacks of good good historiography on its urban past. This article aims to contribute to it, taking the hills as protagonists, in order to study the initial stage of settlement (18th and 19th centuries). It focuses on the process that were installed housing - which constituted a particular urban appereance and neighborhoods -, in the differents hills of Valparaiso, differing stages in heights (heights of the elevator, the Alemania avenue, La Polvora road), and hills (the hills of the port, the Almendral, the Argentina avenue). Special attention is placed also in the types of poor and in hills housing, including huts, tenements and cites, and, finally, in the conclusions, I proposed a few research problems about the historic urbanism in the hills of Valparaiso.