After a very early start and a flight from Cartagena we land in Medellin just after 9.30am, having descended through low cloud cover and passing over a landscape of green, rolling hills. As we leave the airport and start driving through the beautiful countryside we begin to have a little light rain. “It looks like a spring day in Ireland,” Coman proclaims, which is apt as Medellin is known as ‘The City Of Eternal Spring’ due to its year-round pleasant climate, although we were expecting it to be a little sunnier than this.
The road to Medellin takes us through an 8km long tunnel, one of the longest in the whole of the Americas, which was opened just before the pandemic and now almost halves the journey time from the airport to the city. And as we emerge from the other side we are treated to spectacular views of the sprawling metropolis in the valley below.
Our driver Raul is a lovely, chatty man telling us about his 16 year old daughter’s recent school trip to Europe where she was so enamoured with London that she phoned him and said “Daddy, I’m staying here!” He loves Medellin having moved here with his family eight years ago from Boyaca, partly for the climate and also to live in a thriving, exciting city.
We arrive at our lovely little hotel, Quinta Ladera, on a quiet back street in the El Poblado district in the south of Medellin. Only opened a few months ago, it used to be two separate houses that have been redeveloped to make one very tranquil home, elegantly designed around a little pool of water in the courtyard garden. Ingrid greets us with coffee and stores our bags for later, while we get changed for the more temperate climes and call a taxi to head out and explore some of the city.
With 2.5 million residents in the greater metropolitan area and over 4.5 million in the wider municipality, it’s Colombia’s second city and the capital of the department of Antioquia. After a very troubled time in the 1980s and ‘90s, when drug trafficker Pablo Escobar turned it into the murder capital of the world and one of the most dangerous cities on earth, it’s undergone a remarkable transformation. We’ll be visiting much of that recent history over the next couple of days so decide to focus on the earlier days of the city today, exploring El Poblado, the oldest district of Medellin.
Founded on March 2nd 1616, with a monument in Parque El Poblado marking the exact spot, it was initially a small Spanish community surrounded by indigenous tribes, but located on the river which winds through the valley, providing water and easy routes of transportation. It also has very fertile soil, and a more agreeable climate than the first settlement the Spanish built in the area, the beautiful colonial town of Santa Fe de Antioquia.
That town had grown because it was in a part of the Andes rich in gold and the Spanish were obsessed with mining it, but as the population grew they needed better land for food. El Poblado (The Village) and a second settlement (El Sitío de Ana, founded 1675) in what is now Plaza Berrío in downtown Medellin enabled the Spanish to develop agriculture, pastures for grazing and they were able to grow cotton. It was this crop that came to become synonymous with Medellin in the latter half of the 19th Century, leading to a booming textile industry.
One of the most wealthy entrepreneurs was Alejandro Echavarría who in 1907 founded Coltejer Textiles, which rapidly became one of the biggest textile manufacturers in Latin America. And it’s to his son’s former house that we are travelling this morning, to view one of Medellin’s most iconic museums, El Castillo.
A faux-gothic castle, originally built in 1930 by a physician called Joseph Tobón Uribe, it’s an impressive and eccentric house surrounded by attractive landscaped gardens, full of exotic plants and birds, trees and fountains. Until the 1960s it was also surrounded by countryside but the speed of Medellin’s 20th century growth now means skyscrapers tower in all directions outside the grounds. In 1942, when it was still a country estate, Echavarría’s middle son, philanthropist Don Diego Echavarría Misas bought it with his German wife Benedicta Zur Nieden, and curated an amazing home for themselves and their only daughter, Isolde.
The house is full of antiques and artefacts, such as vast porcelain and silverware collections, stained glass windows, marble busts, swords of Conquistadors, Swiss crystal chandeliers, Louis IX imitation furniture, paintings, musical instruments, tapestries and much more. It’s eclectic and impressive but no photos are allowed inside so thanks to Google we grab a few from the internet.
Diego used his wealth for society’s benefit founding hospitals, libraries, old people’s homes and also contributing to urban development and reforestation, but his overwhelming passion was as a benefactor to the arts. So when Isolda tragically died aged just 19, Diego and Benedikta turned El Castillo into a museum of art and culture and donated it to the city of Medellin. It now houses the Sinfónica de Antioquia School of Music, and various music, literature and arts events are held here throughout the year. Don Diego died in 1971 but Benedikta lived until 1998, giving away her fortune to charitable causes and was a much loved matriarch of the city.
We get an Uber from El Castillo to our next ‘must-see’ tourist spot, Cerró Nutibara, a hill in the very north of El Poblado on the edge of downtown. As we go, I ask the driver if the Museum of Modern Art which looks close by, is walking distance and he looks concerned. “No señor, esta zona es peligrosa, tiene muchos ladrones!” While El Poblado district is cosmopolitan and safe for tourists to walk around, downtown Medellin can be dangerous and full of street crime and he warns us against walking unaccompanied through it. Fortunately tomorrow we will have a local guide to show us around.
Once Oscar, our Uber driver, deposits us safely on the summit of Cerró Nutibara, which by now is hot and sunny, we get a chance to see a little more of Medellin’s historic past. The Museo de Ciudad is here, featuring an exhibition of archive black and white photos showing how Medellin has changed from the late 19th century all the way through to the 1970s. Its once grand boulevards and buildings have over the years been replaced by modern architecture and historic places downtown such as the aforementioned Plaza Berrio, where wealthy Medellin citizens had elegant homes, theatres and restaurants, is now a concrete mass of shopping malls, traffic infrastructure and, sadly, deprivation.
Next to the museum is an imitation Antioquian village called Pueblito Paisa, with a stone square, church, fountain, mayor’s office, cute replica houses with balconies and more, showcasing the kind of traditional architecture found in the region’s old towns like Santa Fe de Antioquia and the beautiful Jardin, which we are due to visit at the end of the week. It’s very cute, like a Disney version of a colonial village, but teeming with tourists and full of souvenir shops. However the views of Medellin spread across the Aburra valley are undeniably impressive.
As we drive through Medellin on our way back to our hotel, it’s obvious that Medellin is a modern city growing at an incredible rate, with impressive contemporary architecture and a lot of investment and aspiration fuelling it.
Once we’ve freshened up and unpacked we go for a walk though El Poblano and witness the upscale nature of the area. It’s a hipster district full of bars and restaurants, attractive apartments and shops, but with a slight crackle of unpredictability in the air. It has the same kind of vibe as Camden or Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and with New Year’s Eve almost upon us it’s absolutely thronged in the evening with neighbourhoods like Provenza and Parque Llerias already partying hard.
On our first night we go for a thirty minute walk through Poblado’s nightlife, noticing the fact that there’s also sex shops and people living on the streets in amongst the high-end destinations, making our way to the more tranquil neighbourhood of Manila. There we get a table at the brilliantly reviewed restaurant Veggie and Vegan, which does exactly what it promises to an outrageously high standard.
It’s well worth the walk as the food is utterly fantastic. A sensational hummus, roasted aubergine and crispy chickpea starter is followed by mains of a quinoa rainbow tofu bowl and a Cazuela Paisa, a traditional local bean stew made vegan by substituting fried plantain for chicken. We love it so much that we return for lunch a couple of days later, tucking into mushroom and pineapple taquitos, quinoa risotto with roasted lettuce and chili salsa, and a smoked tofu and kale salad with a cashew nut butter dressing and red berry jam. It’s all absolutely delicious.
It’s sadly not open on New Year’s Eve itself however, like most of the restaurants in the area, as Colombians traditionally celebrate that night at home with their families, so after an increasingly desperate search we have to settle for a basic veggie burger and fries elsewhere. Fortunately on our final two nights in El Poblado we discover a little place near our hotel called Poke Bowl serving healthy food with vegetarian choices, and another excellent veggie restaurant called Marietta in the Provenza neighbourhood which more than hits the spot.
As an introduction to Medellin, El Poblado and its various sights showcase a city both vibrant and historic, with a mixture of sophistication and edginess that suits it well. However during our time we also explore further afield, examining Medellin’s darker side and more notorious reputation, discovering how the cocaine capital of South America turned its fortunes around. It proves quite a ride!
