After dipping our toe into Cartagena’s nightlife when we arrived yesterday, we have a leisurely four days ahead of us to just stroll around the city soaking up all the sights and sounds. And in the constant heat and humidity, taking it slowly is by far the best option.
A couple we met last night at our hotel, Imil and Shaima from Montreal, had recommended a free walking tour they’d done of the city a couple of days before so we book it and meet Camilo, our orange-umbrella-toting guide from the company Nexperience, outside the clock tower at 10am. It’s Boxing Day morning and we hadn’t realised that four cruise ships have docked overnight and so not only is our tour at full capacity with cruise ship passengers, but the entire city is rammed to the gills with them.
Cartagena de Indias is the fifth largest city in Colombia, with two million residents and huge quantities of tourists every year. The capital of the department of Bolivar, it was founded by Spanish adventurer Pedro de Heredia on June 1st 1535, becoming the second European settlement of the country after Santa Marta. In 1984 the historic centre, comprising the San Pedro and Santo Domingo neighbourhoods, became a UNESCO world heritage site and with careful conservation is now back to being one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
Our walking tour meanders through the main highlights in the city, taking in the grand central Plaza de los Coches, where carriages used to park once they had entered through the city gates, and Plaza de la Adouna, which houses the old Customs Houses and government buildings. This was the square where over one million African slaves were brought over two centuries to be branded and traded, and in marked contrast to that horror is now full of Christmas decorations.
Just beyond it is Iglesia de San Pedro and the lovely plaza, full of restaurants and absolutely swarming with tourists, most from the vast cruise ships that have arrived. It’s also packed with male street peddlers trying to sell souvenirs and cigars, seemingly as a front for the whispers of “marijuana, cocaine” they start to proffer as dusk falls. Throughout the city meanwhile are traditionally dressed women, clad in red, blue and yellow dresses with bowls of fruit on their head, vying for tourists to take photos with them in exchange for tips.
These women are Palanqueras, descendants of slaves who had escaped their captors and fled to a village called Palenque in the hills about 50kms outside the city. They established a free community there, becoming the first ‘free’ settlement for black people in the Americas. Maps of how to reach there were braided into enslaved women’s hair in styles that slave owners didn’t understand, so that escapees could try and make their way through the jungle to freedom.
Amidst the terrible cruelty the slaves endured, there were people who tried to help them, one of whom was Pedro Claver, a Jesuit priest from Spain who came to Colombia in the 1600s and was so appalled at their mistreatment he started administering to them, providing medical and spiritual help and trying to improve their lot. He devoted his life to helping them, becoming a "Slave to the Slaves", and was made a saint in 1888.
Pedro Claver lived in a monastery, now a museum named the Santuario de San Pedro, where various exhibitions to do with his life, including the monastic cell he lived, worked and died in, are on display alongside religious art from Latin America and paintings and artwork by Haitian artists. The building is connected to the huge church which also bears his name and houses his body on display in the altar, with his skull clearly visible. Pope Francis, the first South American pope, visited the church in 2017 in honour of San Pedro and he is hailed as a hero of human rights around the world, with Colombian congress declaring September 9th, the date of his death in 1654, to be National Human Rights Day.
We visit the church and monastery museum a couple of days later when the city is mercifully free of cruise ships and we can wander the much emptier and calmer streets without the thousands of day-trippers all jostling for space with each other. And we also later visit the Museum of Modem Art on the same plaza, where we’re especially taken by the work of Gabriel Ortega, who creates fabulous recreations of Renaissance paintings, including Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’ but with Tintín and his dog Snowy as the subjects.
Our first day’s walking tour however continues its beleaguered way through the crowds to Parque Bolivar, once known as Parque de la Inquision, due to the huge Palacio de la Inquision which fills one side of the plaza. It’s a reminder that the Jesuits were frequently the perpetrators of unspeakable crimes rather than the saviours of the oppressed. When we return to visit the palace-turned museum, we witness some of the instruments of torture and murder that they inflicted on anyone they deemed heretical or undesirable, as well as a rather basic exhibition about the history of the city.
Next to Parque Bolivar is the Plaza de la Proclamación where independence from Spain was finally declared by the working class on November 11th 1811, and where the city’s Catedral de Santa Catalina de Alejandría stands. And our final stop on the first morning’s walking tour is Parque Centenario, just outside the clock tower, which was created in 1911 to honour the centenary of Independence. Far calmer today than last night’s Christmas feasting, Camilo points out some of the wildlife that lives there including cotton-topped tamarind monkeys and a sloth slowly munching its way through a leafy lunch.
Glad to have walked the main streets with a guide, but relieved to be free of the crowds, our return visits to the historic centre are more tranquil affairs. And there’s so much more to discover, heading east to the Santo Domingo area where we check out the oldest church in the city, which lends its name to the city, cycle along part of the city walls and walk the gorgeous streets of brightly painted houses, in myriad hues, with many featuring grand balconies and dripping with bougainvillea. Quite a few of the front doors have huge iron door-knockers which denoted the wealth and status of their owners; lions signified military, lizards the aristocracy and sea creatures meant the owner was a merchant.
The historic centre of the city is also full of restaurants and we become lunch regulars at the Cartegena branch of Crepes & Waffles, with its fantastic vegetarian selection and lovely setting. But it’s the two restaurants we visit in the old town for dinner that really blow us away.
On our second night in Cartagena we wander through the elegant streets of Santo Domingo to Plaza de San Diego where we find an incredible Argentinian restaurant called Marzola. The decor is jawdropping. Every inch is covered with bottle tops and it’s a riot of late 19th Century furnishings and obsolete 20th century telephones, old radios and cash registers. Paintings, film posters, clocks, mirrors, records, lampshades, street signs, flags, football shirts, neon, sports memorabilia, religious iconography and more crazy paraphernalia are crammed onto the walls with wild floor tiles stretching throughout.
The be-jewelled owner is sat on a gold throne in a black beret while his trilby-wearing staff run the operation like a tightly oiled ship, even down to the two women in a corner diligently working their way through his receipts. It’s eclectic, idiosyncratic, vibrant and yet strangely cohesive making the little dining rooms feel intimate, almost like a French bistro but with the edgy glamour of the Cosa Nostra and the smoky parilla of a fine Argentinian steakhouse. And our grilled vegetables and roasted provolone cheese are delicious, accompanied by a robust Argentinian red wine. Marzola instantly becomes one of the most memorable restaurants we’ve ever visited.
And on our penultimate night in Cartagena we remember a tip from our friend Dean and manage to secure a table at Casa Ana, an opulently decorated restaurant whose fabulous interior is like a decadent speakeasy, with a hint of The Ivy. Featuring an Asian themed menu we tuck into delicious vegetarian sushi, gyoza and Vietnamese noodles with classic cocktails, whilst the DJ pumps out classic dance tracks and cool pop. Dancers and acrobats cavort around us and a glamorous singer tackles the likes of Aretha Franklin and even a Dua Lipa mega mix. I tell Coman I’m not sure what language she’s singing in. “Neither is she,” he replies.
We’ve been seduced by the splendour and heat, history and beauty of old Cartagena, but there’s more to the city than these two districts, and during our four days in the city we explore beyond the walls.
