El Internado

El Internado occupies a position on Cerro Concepción, the hill that sits adjacent to Cerro Alegre and shares its character: both hills were developed primarily by British, German, and Italian immigrant communities in the nineteenth century and both retain a distinct architectural heritage of painted Victorian and art nouveau houses, now supplemented by decades of the street art tradition that has made Valparaíso internationally recognised as an open-air gallery. Cerro Concepción is slightly quieter than Cerro Alegre — marginally less touristic, slightly more neighbourhood-rooted — which gives El Internado an intimate quality that distinguishes it from the busier bars lower on the hill or in the port area. The bar serves Valparaíso's gay community and gay visitors as an explicitly identified gay venue on a hill that is otherwise defined by a broader bohemian rather than specifically gay identity. The combination of the cerro setting, the street art surroundings, and the small-scale intimacy of the Valparaíso gay scene gives El Internado a character that would be impossible to replicate in a larger city: this is what a gay bar looks like when it exists in a UNESCO World Heritage port city of 280,000 people rather than in a metropolitan capital.