Its artistic beauty inspires others to create, and its collaborative nature moves people to care.
Selaron’s Staircase brightens the Santa Teresa neighborhood with more than 2,000 colorful tiles lining the steps to the convent.
“Amazing, marvelous, maravilhoso,” are words one woman used to try to capture the passion in the area.
It started with an artist who wanted to make his surroundings a little more beautiful, so he decorated 220 steps with tiles from around the world. Now, people come from all over the world to see the life’s work of Chilean artist George Selaron. He started the project in 1990 and kept adding to it until his death in 2013.
He was able to get tiles from different countries, and it became a challenge to have different countries represented. Currently, that number is at about 140.
Selaron’s work to beautify one small part of the city has become something much larger than just a staircase.
