Four days in Bogota: cold, high, grey, and far better than its reputation

Three nights at 2,600 metres: the colonial quarter on the first afternoon, a day of gold and Botero ending on the mountain, a salt cathedral cut into a mine, and the national museum in an old prison.

Copy this itinerary
Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Bogotá
Places
9 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Bogota sits in a bowl on an Andean plateau at 2,640 metres, with a wall of mountains along its eastern edge and eight million people spread out below them. It is nearer the equator than Nairobi and it is cold: fourteen degrees most days of the year, grey more often than not, and raining by four in the afternoon about as often as not.

None of which is why anybody remembers it. What people remember is a museum holding fifty thousand pieces of pre-Columbian gold, a second one full of Botero given away for nothing, a colonial quarter climbing into the hills, and a city that spent the 1990s as a byword for danger and has spent the thirty years since quietly becoming somewhere people want to live.

Three nights is enough for the historic centre, the museums and a day out at the salt cathedral. Take the first afternoon slowly: the altitude is real and it catches people who arrive from the coast.

Highlights

  • The Gold Museum, where a raft of gold figures explains where the El Dorado legend actually came from
  • The Botero collection, given to the country by the artist on condition that it stays free
  • Monserrate at dusk, 3,150 metres up, with the whole city lit below
  • A cathedral carved 180 metres down inside a working salt mine
  • Ajiaco, a thick chicken and potato soup eaten with capers and cream, which is what this cold city runs on

Where to stay

Bogota

The city runs north to south along the foot of the eastern mountains, so the geography is simple: the historic centre and the museums are at the southern end, the money and the restaurants are north, and the mountain with the church on it stands directly above the old town.

Three nights gives an afternoon to the colonial quarter, a full day to the museums and Monserrate, a day out to the salt mine at Zipaquira, and a last morning at the national museum on the way north.

Day by day

Day 1 in Bogotá

La Candelaria, slowly

Do not do much today. The altitude will make an ordinary walk feel like a hill and there is no advantage in fighting it.

La Candelaria is the colonial quarter, a grid of low painted houses and heavy churches climbing towards the mountain, and it holds almost everything worth seeing in the city. Start at the main square, which has the cathedral on one side, the congress building on another and the supreme court on a third, the last of these rebuilt after it was stormed and burned in 1985.

Then walk uphill through the narrow streets. They get steeper, more painted and more student as you go, and the small triangular square at the top is where the city was founded and where everybody drinks chicha out of a ceramic cup.

  1. 14:30

    Plaza de Bolívar

    Architecture

    The main square, with the cathedral, the capitol, the mayor's office and the supreme court around it and a statue of Bolivar in the middle. It is where every demonstration in Colombia happens, and the pigeons and the llamas for photographs are a permanent fixture.

  2. 15:30

    Primatial Cathedral of Bogotá

    Visit

    The largest church in the country, neoclassical, rebuilt in the early nineteenth century after earthquakes took the earlier ones down. Plain and enormous inside, and the chapel of the founding conquistador is off to one side.

  3. 17:00

    Gato Gris

    Eat

    A small dark bar on the square where Bogota was founded, hung with paintings and full of students and chess players. Order a canelazo, hot aguardiente with cinnamon and panela, which is the correct drink for this weather.

  4. 19:00

    Dinner in La Candelaria

    Eat

    The streets around the university have cheap set menus and a few very good small restaurants. Ask for ajiaco: chicken and potato soup with capers and cream, and the only sensible thing to eat at this temperature.

With more time: The graffiti in La Candelaria is genuinely good and largely legal, and the walking tours that explain it run most afternoons from the main square. If the afternoon is clear and the altitude is not bothering you, the streets east of the square give the best views back over the roofs.

Day 2 in Bogotá

Gold, Botero, and the mountain at dusk

Two of the best museums in South America are four blocks apart, both in the old town, and one of them is free.

Start with the gold. The Muisca people who lived on this plateau made offerings of worked gold to a lagoon, and when the Spanish heard about a ceremony where a chief was covered in gold dust and rowed out on a raft, they turned it into El Dorado and spent a century looking for a city that never existed. The raft itself, found in a cave in 1969, is in the last room.

Then the Botero. Then, if the sky is clear, go up the mountain for sunset, which needs about two hours including the queue.

  1. 09:30

    Gold Museum

    Culture

    Tens of thousands of pieces of pre-Hispanic goldwork, arranged by culture and by what it was for rather than by date, ending with the small raft that started the El Dorado story. Two hours minimum, free on Sundays, and the best museum in Colombia by a distance.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch near the museums

    Eat

    The streets between the two museums have cafes and menu del dia places aimed at office workers, which is fast and costs very little. Anywhere with a queue at half past twelve.

  3. 13:30

    Banco de la Republica Art Collection (Museo Botero)

    Culture

    Around three thousand works in a group of restored colonial houses: Fernando Botero's own paintings and sculptures on one side, and on the other the Picassos, Monets and Renoirs he bought and gave away with them. Free, always, because he insisted on it.

  4. 16:30

    Cerro de Monserrate

    Nature

    A church at 3,150 metres reached by funicular or cable car from the foot of the mountain, five hundred metres above the city. Sunset is the hour and the queue is longest then, so go up before it and come down after dark. Take a layer: it is properly cold at the top.

With more time: The modern art museum and the colonial art museum are both within a few minutes of the gold museum and both take under an hour. If cloud has taken the mountain, the memorial built from melted-down guerrilla weapons a short walk away is the more interesting rainy-afternoon alternative.

Day 3 in Bogotá

A cathedral inside a salt mine

Fifty kilometres north of the city, a mountain has been mined for salt since long before the Spanish arrived, and at the bottom of it somebody built a cathedral.

The version you visit was carved in the 1990s after the earlier one was closed as unsafe, and it goes down 180 metres through fourteen chapels of the Stations of the Cross, each cut into the rock and lit in a different colour, opening into a nave with a cross the height of a house cut into the far wall. It is a strange and slightly overwhelming place and it takes most of a morning.

The town above it is worth an hour afterwards: a white colonial square, a church, and lunch before the drive back.

  1. 09:30

    Catedral de Sal

    Nature

    A working salt mine with a cathedral cut into it, 180 metres underground: fourteen chapels down a sloping tunnel, then a nave with a cross carved into the rock face and lit from below. Tours run continuously and take two to three hours. It is cool down there but not cold.

  2. 13:30

    Lunch on the square in Zipaquira

    Eat

    The colonial square above the mine has restaurants under the arcades doing set lunches for a fraction of Bogota prices. Trout and ajiaco are the local order.

  3. 15:00

    Town Cathedral

    Visit

    The town's own cathedral on the main square, unusually handsome for a small Colombian town, with its interior laid out in a chequerboard of red brick and white limestone. Twenty minutes, and the square around it is the reason to linger.

  4. 16:15

    Salt Museum

    Visit

    A small museum beside the mine covering the geology of the deposit and how salt was extracted here from before the Spanish arrived. Half an hour, and it makes considerably more sense of the cathedral than the cathedral does of itself.

With more time: There is a tourist train that runs from Bogota to Zipaquira on Saturdays and Sundays and takes far longer than the road, which is either the point or the problem depending on your mood. By car or organised trip it is an hour and a half each way, more in traffic leaving the city.

Day 4 in Bogotá

The national museum, in an old prison

The last morning goes to a building that was a jail until 1946: a Greek cross of thick stone with a rotunda in the middle, designed as a panopticon so a single guard could see every cell.

It has been the national museum since, and the collection runs from pre-Columbian ceramics through the colony and the wars of independence into twentieth century Colombian art. The cells are the galleries, which makes the whole thing more interesting than the contents alone would.

It sits north of the old town, on the way towards the newer part of the city and roughly on the road to the airport. Allow an hour to El Dorado, more in the afternoon.

  1. 10:00

    Museo Nacional

    Culture

    The oldest museum in Colombia, founded in 1823 and housed since the 1940s in a nineteenth century panopticon prison, with the old cells serving as rooms. Pre-Columbian pottery, colonial painting, independence and modern art, in that order, over three floors.

With more time: If the flight is late, the district immediately north of the museum is the best small restaurant neighbourhood in the city and a good place for a long lunch. Further out, the botanical garden concentrates on Andean and high-moorland plants and is the only place most visitors will see a paramo up close.

Before you go

The altitude, and taking the first day easy

Bogota is higher than any city in Europe and higher than almost anywhere in North America. Most people feel it as breathlessness on stairs, a headache, and a night of poor sleep rather than anything worse, and it passes in a day or two.

Drink more water than you want to, go easy on alcohol on the first evening, and do not plan the mountain for the afternoon you land. Coca tea is sold everywhere and helps some people. Anyone arriving from Cartagena or the coast will notice it much more than anyone coming from Quito.

It also means the sun is fierce whenever it comes out, despite the temperature. Sunburn at fourteen degrees surprises people every day of the week.

Getting in and getting around

El Dorado is the busiest airport in Colombia and the main hub for the whole country, 15 km west of the centre and about forty minutes in normal traffic. There is no rail link. Use an official airport taxi from the rank or a ride-hailing app booked from inside the terminal.

The city has no metro yet, though one is being built. Instead there is TransMilenio, a network of articulated buses running in dedicated lanes from raised stations, which is fast, cheap, and packed to an uncomfortable degree at rush hour. Buy a Tullave card, keep your bag in front of you, and avoid it entirely with luggage.

For most visitors, ride-hailing does everything for very little. The historic centre is walkable and steep, and walking uphill at this altitude takes longer than the map thinks.

Staying safe

Bogota is far safer than its reputation and it is not a city to be careless in. The phrase everyone here uses is no dar papaya, roughly do not hand somebody an opportunity: no phone in your hand on the street, no visible jewellery, no bag over the back of a chair, the day's cash rather than everything.

La Candelaria is fine by day and thins out after dark, especially the upper streets towards the mountain. Take a taxi or a car back to the hotel in the evening rather than walking, even a few blocks. The northern neighbourhoods, from Chapinero upwards, are comfortable at night.

Do not accept drinks or cigarettes from strangers in bars. Scopolamine robberies are rare but they are a genuine local warning rather than a traveller myth.

Eating and drinking

Ajiaco is the dish of this city: chicken, three kinds of potato and a herb called guascas, served with capers, cream and half a corn cob, and it is exactly right for the climate. Look for it at lunch rather than dinner.

The other things to try are a tamal for breakfast, wrapped in a banana leaf and eaten with hot chocolate, and the chocolate itself, which comes with a lump of soft white cheese that you drop into it. That is not a mistake and you should do it.

Colombian coffee at home is much better than it used to be, because for years the good beans were all exported. The specialist roasters in Chapinero and La Macarena are worth seeking out. Aguardiente, anise spirit, is the drink.

When to go

The temperature does not change through the year: high teens by day, single figures at night, every month. What changes is rain. The drier stretches are roughly December to February and July to August; April, May, October and November are the wettest.

Rain arrives in the afternoon, hard and briefly, so mornings are the reliable half of the day. Plan the outdoor parts before lunch and keep the museums in reserve.

Sundays are worth aiming for. The city closes 120 kilometres of road to cars every Sunday morning for the ciclovia, and much of the population is out on it.

Where to stay

La Candelaria puts you inside the historic centre and within walking distance of everything but the mountain and the salt mine. It is atmospheric, cheap and student-heavy, and it empties at night.

Chapinero and the zones around Parque de la 93 and the Zona G are the comfortable alternative: better restaurants, safer evening streets, more expensive rooms, and fifteen minutes by car from the old town. La Macarena, between the two, is the small compromise with the best food per square block in the city.

Bogota is not a city that sells itself in the first hour. It is grey when you land, the air is thin, and the old town looks scruffier than the photographs. Give it a day and the museums, the food and the mountain start doing the work.

Go up Monserrate on the clearest evening you get, whichever day that turns out to be, and eat ajiaco at least twice.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

How many days do you need in Bogota?
Three nights. Two would cover the old town and the two great museums; the third buys the salt cathedral at Zipaquira, which is the best day trip in the region. Longer only pays off if you are using the city as a base for the villages north of it.
Is Bogota safe for tourists?
Much safer than its 1990s reputation and still a city that rewards care. Keep the phone out of sight, do not walk in La Candelaria after dark, take a car in the evening even for short distances, and never leave a bag on the back of a chair. Violent crime affecting visitors is rare; opportunist theft is not.
Will the altitude affect you?
Probably a little. At 2,640 metres most people notice breathlessness on stairs and sleep badly the first night. Drink water, go easy on alcohol at first, and do not climb Monserrate on the day you land, particularly if you have flown up from the coast.
Is the Gold Museum worth it?
It is the reason to come to Bogota. Tens of thousands of pieces, presented by what the objects were for rather than by chronology, and the room explaining the El Dorado ceremony is worth the trip on its own. Allow two hours and go early. Entry is free on Sundays, which is also when it is fullest.
What is the weather like?
Cool and unpredictable, all year. Expect the high teens by day and single figures after dark, with rain most afternoons in the wetter months. Bring a jacket and something waterproof whatever the season, and sunscreen for when it clears.