Flashback Friday: The Best Places To See Amazing Street Art

Earlier in the month I wrote about Finding Banksy In Coney Island. The controversial graffiti artists took up “residency” in NYC for one month and was leaving his mark all over the city.

I only had the opportunity to see one of his pieces in person. I tried to see a couple of others but they were already covered up (so that they could be preserved) by the time I stopped by.

After following Banksy’s residency (mainly) online, it made me think about graffiti and a post that I wrote about street art back in the middle of 2012. I thought it would make for a fun post to re-share for this week’s Flashback Friday.

Here is the post:

The Best Places To See Amazing Street Art

This post was orignally published on June 6, 2012

Valparaiso

A couple of months back I was reading a Lonely Planet newsletter which had a short article related to street art. A LP Magazine reader sent in a question asking- Where can I see Amazing Street Art? (Check out the article HERE)

The article answered the question with three suggestions- Belgium, Pittsburgh and Melbourne. I’ve been to Belgium and Melbourne and don’t remember the street art. Maybe I didn’t pay attention to it or it just did not catch my eye.

However, I immediately thought of a couple of cities that did- Bogota, Colombia and Valparaiso, Chile.

Bogota

Kim and I spent a few days in Bogota, Colombia. It was a city that we would’ve liked some more time in. It has a busy main square, some interesting museums and is a great city to just wander around. There are statues randomly placed on the roofs of buildings and lots of really interesting street art worth checking out.

Here are a few pictures of the street art that we came across:

We visited Valparaiso as a day trip from Santiago. The city didn’t have much to do and was a bit underwhelming. However there were a couple of things that stood out. A large part of the city is up in the hills so you take funiculars (something like an inclined, hillside elevator) up. We wandered around, locating and taking rides on most of the funiculars.