Bar Cinzano

About this place Bar Cinzano

Bar Cinzano has been operating at Plaza Aníbal Pinto since 1896, making it one of the oldest continuously operating bars in Chile and a repository of Valparaíso's long history as a working port city. The bar sits in the lower city, in the flat port district that was the commercial and social heart of Valparaíso during its heyday as the primary Pacific coast port before the opening of the Panama Canal redirected shipping routes in 1914. The atmosphere is thick with this history: the tiled walls, the long bar, the tables where sailors, merchants, and bohemians have been drinking for 130 years. Live music is a regular feature — tango, cueca (Chile's national dance), and the broader tradition of Chilean popular music. The bar is gay-friendly in the way that the best port bars often are: a history of welcoming everyone who arrives at the door has made exclusion culturally alien to the establishment. For visitors to Valparaíso, Bar Cinzano is essential — not only as a gay-friendly venue but as a direct experience of the city's living history. A night that begins here in the lower city and moves up to Cerro Alegre or Cerro Concepción is the ideal Valparaíso itinerary.