Ritoque: the open city of architects and artists, the name of an utopia

Before arriving in Valparaiso we stop in Ritoque, an open city by the ocean built in the 1970s by a group of architects and artists aiming to found a collective on a three hundreds hector land. It was actually an experiment to found a city from nowhere; at that time if you think the place without an infrastructure, electricity, water, gas, it must have been quite an adventure. After almost sixty years have passed today it is still a collective place where seven families and forty seven people in total live. They gather every Wednesday, hold meetings to make common decisions, give art workshops. The city has two parts, the one on the coastal side is made of houses, each with a different style on its own, connected by a road (actually sand), the higher part is where the theatre, cemeteries are located, on one of which I read: ‘el amor que mueve al sol y a las estrellas’, it is love that moves the sun and the stars. A common journey towards an utopia…