Which is the oldest bar in Chile?

On what can be cited, La Piojera in Santiago. Spanish Wikipedia records the premises already working as a bar by 1896, and the Benedetti family have held it since Carlos Benedetti Pini bought it in 1916 — a run of drinking use within twenty years of the claimed date, which no other Chilean house here can show.

A general store that also poured. Bar Cinzano in Valparaíso was opened as one in 1896 by an Italian immigrant, Pipo Lima, and the accounts say it worked as a bar now and then before it became one properly. Because nobody names the year that changed, the house keeps its page and stays out of the ranking.

Why is Confitería Torres out of the ranking?

Two reasons, and the sources give both. The 1879 dates a confectionery founded by José Domingo Torres, not drink-led trade, and the business has occupied these rooms in the Palacio Íñiguez only since 1904. Either alone would keep it out of a ranking of drinking houses; it keeps its page and its pin on the map.

Did President Alessandri really give La Piojera its name?

That is the tradition the house tells. Arturo Alessandri is said to have been brought to the cantina in 1922 and asked what flea-pit — piojera — he had been taken to, and the insult stuck. Its archived history page dates the name to that year, and the sign itself went up only in 1981.

Is La Piojera leaving central Santiago?

No, on the most recent reporting. Meganoticias reported in September 2025 that Aillavilú was then its only premises and quoted the house saying it would never shut, and in June 2026 that a second and larger Piojera was opening in Independencia. The stories about a move are about that second house.

3 pubs checked · updated 18 September 2026

The oldest pub in Chile

The short answer

Oldest claim

Confitería Torres

Says 1879. No document from that date has been found.

Grade C · Tradition

Oldest proof

La Piojera

On record from 1916.

Grade A · Documented

By claim the earliest Chilean date on this list is 1879, at Confitería Torres in Santiago — but the year dates a confectioner's shop, and the house has stood in the Palacio Íñiguez on the Alameda only since 1904. By record it is La Piojera, a few streets away beside the Mercado Central: Spanish Wikipedia says a bar was already working on the premises by 1896, and Carlos Benedetti Pini bought it in 1916, since when his family have kept it. That is the only Chilean grade A here.

Chile's old drinking rooms did not begin as taverns. All three houses on this page grew out of shops, and the shop is what their earliest dates record. A pulpería was a grocery that also sold drink, sometimes across the same counter as the flour and the candles, and the Valparaíso house on this page opened in 1896 as one of those before settling over the years into a bar and restaurant, without anybody writing down the year it changed. A confitería was a confectioner's, and the Santiago one here was founded by a butler in 1879 to sell sweet things before it became a room where presidents and newspapermen drank vermouth. Only La Piojera was a drinking place from the start, and it was the plainest kind, a cantina by the market. Two consequences follow for the dating. The first is that a Chilean founding year usually belongs to a trade this site does not rank, which is why two of the three houses here are published with their pages and kept out of the ranking, with the reason printed on each. The second is that almost nothing is written down: there is no national building register in play, the years come from Spanish Wikipedia, Memoria Chilena and the Santiago and Valparaíso press, and the strongest fact on the page is a change of ownership rather than a licence.

A market cantina, a confectioner’s and a Valparaíso tango room

La Piojera is a yellow wall, an open door and a crowd, on calle Aillavilú beside the Mercado Central, and it is the one house here that has always been what it is now. Its drink is the terremoto, pipeño wine topped with pineapple ice cream, and its customers have included politicians, painters and most of the city at one time or another; Chile declared it a monument of the nation’s sentiments in 2003. Confitería Torres is the opposite in every way: high ceilings and mirrors on the Alameda, where the diplomatic corps invited to Chile’s centenary were given their vermouth of honour in September 1910, where the Barros Luco sandwich was named for the president who kept ordering it, and which is one of the houses credited with inventing the cola de mono. Bar Cinzano sits on the Plaza Aníbal Pinto in the port, and is the one you go to for the singing — tangos and boleros most nights since Pablo Varas put a tango room upstairs after 1978, with Carmen Corena on the bill from 1986 and two albums recorded in the house.

Why two of three are published outside the ranking

This site ranks houses by when drink-led trade can be dated on the premises, which is a narrower question than when a business started. At Bar Cinzano the sources are unusually frank about the difficulty: they say the place worked as a pulpería and, now and then, as a bar, and that it settled into being a bar and restaurant over the years that followed — a sentence that describes a transition and names no year for it. At Confitería Torres the gap is wider still, because the 1879 belongs to a confectioner and the rooms themselves are of 1904. Neither house is demoted or hidden for that; both keep a page, a pin and a note explaining exactly which year is doing what. The reasoning is set out in the methodology, and the difference between a trade name and a trading date in inn, tavern or alehouse.

Two houses that closed and came back

Chile’s recent history is in these rows as plainly as its nineteenth century. Bar Cinzano shut in October 2020 during the pandemic and reopened in September 2022, which the Santiago daily Emol reported. La Piojera came through the same years with its custom running at about a third of what it was before 2019, on Meganoticias’s account of June 2026, and answered the rumours of a move by opening a second house in Independencia rather than closing the first. Neither break is a mark against them here — what this site measures is whether the record can date the drinking, not whether the trade was easy.

Where Chile sits in the wider list

Three houses is a first pass. Valparaíso alone could carry more, and Concepción, La Serena and the wine country south of Santiago are entirely unworked; so is every Chilean house that has closed. For the nearest comparison — another South American country where the old rooms are shops and cafés that a city register has since protected — see the oldest pubs in Argentina; for houses that began as groceries in the same way, Peru; and for the older colonial pattern, Mexico. The full international ranking is at the top 100 oldest pubs.

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The contenders, oldest claim first

ClaimProof

Confitería Torres
Grade C
Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region
Spanish Wikipedia, citing Memoria Chilena and the house itself, records that a butler named Torres founded the confectionery in 1879 and that it has stood in the Palacio Íñiguez on the Alameda since 1904. A Santiago daily of the period gives the year a second and independent reading. El Cronista of Thursday 26 April 1979, read in the digital archive the Universidad Diego Portales keeps of it, reports the house
Locally dated 1879; no early record found.
La Piojera
Grade A
Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region
Nobody we can point to states 1896 except Spanish Wikipedia, which says the premises was already working as a bar by then. The bar's own account is different and stops short of a founding year: its website carried the line 'La Piojera, desde 1922' when it was archived on 7 December 2024, and the history page archived the next day has Carlos Benedetti Pini buying the place in 1916, the family running it ever since
Claims 1896; first recorded 1916.
Bar Cinzano
Grade C
Valparaíso, Valparaíso Region
Spanish Wikipedia, following La Tercera's account of October 2020, records that the Italian immigrant Pipo Lima opened a business on the Plaza Aníbal Pinto in 1896 that worked as a pulpería and, now and then, as a bar; over the years it settled into being a bar and restaurant, and the Lima family held it until 1932. Pablo Varas bought it in 1978 and put a tango room upstairs, then moved the tango down and made the
Locally dated 1896; no early record found.

The photographs above are other people's work, used under an open licence. Every photographer, licence and source page is named in the image credits.

Common questions

Which is the oldest bar in Chile?: On what can be cited, La Piojera in Santiago. Spanish Wikipedia records the premises already working as a bar by 1896, and the Benedetti family have held it since Carlos Benedetti Pini bought it in 1916 — a run of drinking use within twenty years of the claimed date, which no other Chilean house here can show.
What is a pulpería?: A general store that also poured. Bar Cinzano in Valparaíso was opened as one in 1896 by an Italian immigrant, Pipo Lima, and the accounts say it worked as a bar now and then before it became one properly. Because nobody names the year that changed, the house keeps its page and stays out of the ranking.
Why is Confitería Torres out of the ranking?: Two reasons, and the sources give both. The 1879 dates a confectionery founded by José Domingo Torres, not drink-led trade, and the business has occupied these rooms in the Palacio Íñiguez only since 1904. Either alone would keep it out of a ranking of drinking houses; it keeps its page and its pin on the map.
Did President Alessandri really give La Piojera its name?: That is the tradition the house tells. Arturo Alessandri is said to have been brought to the cantina in 1922 and asked what flea-pit — piojera — he had been taken to, and the insult stuck. Its archived history page dates the name to that year, and the sign itself went up only in 1981.
Is La Piojera leaving central Santiago?: No, on the most recent reporting. Meganoticias reported in September 2025 that Aillavilú was then its only premises and quoted the house saying it would never shut, and in June 2026 that a second and larger Piojera was opening in Independencia. The stories about a move are about that second house.