Almacenes Fiscales de Valparaíso, Industrial warehouse complex near Port of Valparaíso, Chile.
Almacenes Fiscales de Valparaíso is a group of four surviving warehouses from a set of nine built in the 19th century, standing beside the Chilean Navy's breakwater and the TPS Valparaíso port installations. The first three were built between 1851 and 1854 under engineer Augusto Charme, with lime-and-brick outer walls, adobe cross walls and slate roofs, each of three floors plus a basement.
Construction began in 1868, following Valparaiso's bombardment in 1866, incorporating European industrial standards of that era. The warehouses were built as part of the city's recovery and port expansion after the attack.
The warehouses' name comes from the fiscal deposit system: a law of 13 May 1824 first let Chileans and foreigners store goods in port warehouses until sold or redistributed. The first fiscal warehouses opened in 1833 at the Aduana de San Agustín, a project of finance minister Manuel Rengifo, and operated for about 20 years between Cerro Concepción and Cerro Cordillera.
The four surviving warehouses stand beside the Navy's breakwater and the TPS Valparaíso port installations, within the Zona Típica of the Historic Area. Access is from the port side, so check opening arrangements with the site before setting out; the quays and surrounding ground are uneven.
Of the nine 19th-century warehouses built, only four survive, now within the Zona Típica of Valparaíso's Historic Area. The 1861 explosion of the French pontoon Infernal, loaded with coal and munitions, damaged two of the first three sections; Arturo Prat Chacón took part in the failed effort to stop the fire.
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