Sewell, the city of stairs

A painted mining town with a staircase instead of streets

A company town on the side of the Andes at 2,000 to 2,250 metres, built by the Braden Copper Company in 1906 for the workers of El Teniente, the largest underground copper mine in the world. The slope is too steep for streets, so Sewell has none: it is built around a central staircase with buildings in bright paint stepping up the mountain either side of it. At its height in 1960 some 16,000 people lived here. After the state took control of the mine and copper was nationalised in 1971 the workforce was moved down into the valley along a new road, and parts of the town came down in the 1980s. What was left has been restored, declared a national monument in 1998 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006, and nobody lives there now.