Three days in Cartagena: the city Spain walled in because it kept losing it

Two nights on the Colombian Caribbean: the walled town and the ramparts at sunset, a fortress and a hilltop convent in the cool of the morning, then the Inquisition palace before the plane.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Cartagena (Colombia)
Places
7 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Cartagena was where the silver of Peru and the gold of New Granada waited for the fleet to Spain, which made it the richest port in the Americas and the one everybody wanted to take. Francis Drake sacked it in 1586 and was paid to leave. A British fleet of nearly two hundred ships besieged it in 1741 and was beaten by a garrison a fraction of its size under a commander who by then had one eye, one arm and one leg.

So Spain spent two centuries building walls. Eleven kilometres of them, plus a hill fort designed to be impossible, and the result is a complete colonial city inside stone ramparts you can walk along in an evening: balconies dripping with bougainvillea, squares with churches on them, and cobbled streets in ochre, lime and cobalt.

Two nights is enough for the walled town, the fortress and the museums. It is very hot, so work around that rather than against it: forts and walls at the ends of the day, indoor things in the middle.

Highlights

  • Sunset from the ramparts, with a drink, which is what the whole city does at six
  • San Felipe de Barajas, a hill fort with tunnels cut through it that the British could not take
  • The church where a Jesuit spent forty years at the dock caring for the people coming off the slave ships
  • The Inquisition palace, with the window where you denounced your neighbours still in the wall
  • Walking Getsemani in the evening, when the squares fill and somebody is always drumming

Where to stay

Cartagena de Indias

The old city is a walled oval on the water, small enough to cross in twenty minutes, divided into the grand quarter around the cathedral and the quieter San Diego end. Getsemani sits just outside the landward gate. The fortress and the convent hill are a few minutes east by car, and the modern hotel strip runs south down a peninsula.

Two nights covers all of it. The old town takes an evening and a morning, the fortifications take half a day, and the museums fill the hottest hours.

Day by day

Day 1 in Cartagena (Colombia)

Through the clock tower gate, and sunset on the wall

Arrive, drop everything, and wait until about four. Walking the old town in the middle of the afternoon is a mistake you only make once.

Go in through the main gate under the clock tower, which was the only land entrance to the walled city and had a drawbridge until the nineteenth century. The square immediately inside it was the slave market. There is a plaque and very little else, and it is worth standing there for a minute before the bougainvillea takes over.

Then wander. The grid is small and getting lost is the point. Aim to be up on the ramparts on the western side by about half past five, because that is where the whole city goes.

  1. 16:00

    Plaza de los Coches

    Architecture

    The square inside the main gate, under the yellow clock tower that is the emblem of the city. It was the slave market for two centuries and is now arcades, sweet stalls and horse carriages. Read the plaque, then walk on.

  2. 17:00

    Catedral de Santa Catalina

    Religious

    Begun in the 1570s and knocked about by Francis Drake's cannon before it was finished, which is why the tower is a later addition. Plain and cool inside, standing on the grandest square in the old town with the palm trees and the colonial mansions around it.

  3. 18:00

    Cafe del Mar

    Eat

    A bar built on top of the western rampart, facing straight out to sea, and the most reliable sunset in Colombia. Drinks cost several times what they do at street level and everybody pays it. Get there an hour early for a table on the wall.

  4. 20:00

    Dinner in Getsemani

    Eat

    Ten minutes' walk outside the landward gate, Getsemani has the same colonial streets with a fraction of the prices and considerably more going on. The main square fills with people, food carts and drumming from about nine.

With more time: The full circuit of the ramparts is about two and a half kilometres and takes an hour at an evening pace, which is the best possible introduction to how the town is laid out. The vaulted cells built into the wall at the northern end are now craft shops and stay open late.

Day 2 in Cartagena (Colombia)

The fortress and the convent hill, before it gets hot

Start at seven. The two things outside the walls are both on high ground with no shade, and by ten they are punishing.

The convent on the hill goes first, because the view explains everything else: the walled town on its spit, the lagoons behind it, the fort on the ridge, and the reason a fleet could not simply sail in. Take a taxi up; walking it is not advised.

The fortress below is the point of the morning. It was built to command every approach to the city and it is riddled with tunnels cut so that defenders could move unseen and attackers, if they got in, would be caught in the dark. In 1741 a British force many times larger than the garrison failed to take it, and Britain had already struck medals celebrating the victory.

  1. 07:30

    La Popa

    Visit

    A 150 metre hill east of the city with a convent from the early seventeenth century on top of it, a courtyard full of flowers, and a view over the whole bay, the walls and the fortress. Go by taxi and ask the driver to wait; there is nothing else up there.

  2. 09:00

    Castillo de San Felipe

    Historic

    The largest fortress the Spanish built anywhere in the Americas, begun in 1657 on the hill commanding the landward approach and enlarged for a century afterwards. Sloped walls that cannon shot glances off, and a warren of tunnels underneath. Take a torch and go early: there is no shade at all.

  3. 12:30

    Lunch in the old town

    Eat

    Back inside the walls, the set lunch at a local place off the main squares costs a fraction of the restaurants on them. Fried fish with coconut rice and plantain is the standard and it is very good.

  4. 15:00

    Convento & Iglesia de San Pedro Claver

    Visit

    The church and convent where Pedro Claver, a Jesuit priest, spent forty years meeting slave ships at the dock with food, water and medicine, and baptising the people on them. He is buried under the glass of the high altar. The cloister beside it is one of the quietest places in the city.

With more time: The naval museum next door to the church covers the sieges in detail and is air conditioned, which counts for a lot in the middle of the afternoon. The oldest church in the city, a couple of streets north, has a leaning bell tower that local legend blames on the devil.

Day 3 in Cartagena (Colombia)

The Inquisition palace and the gold, then the plane

The last morning stays on one square, which is convenient because the airport is ten minutes away.

The Inquisition ran its South American tribunal from here, and the building is a fine piece of eighteenth century colonial architecture with a small hatch in the outside wall through which anonymous denunciations were posted. Inside are the instruments, which are displayed without much subtlety, and a good deal of the city's own history.

The gold museum across the square is small, free and quietly excellent, covering the Zenu people who lived on these plains and drained them with canal systems that worked for a thousand years.

  1. 09:30

    Palacio de la Inquisición

    Architecture

    The seat of the Inquisition's tribunal for northern South America, in a colonial palace with a stone doorway and wooden balconies. The denunciation window is still in the wall on the side street. Part torture museum, part city history, and better on the second half than the first.

  2. 11:15

    Museo del Oro y Arqueología

    Visit

    A small free museum on the same square holding the goldwork and pottery of the Zenu, who farmed and drained these floodplains long before the Spanish arrived. Forty minutes, air conditioned, and a good last thing to do.

With more time: If the flight is late, the vaulted craft market in the northern wall and the sweet stalls under the arcades by the clock tower are the two places to buy anything. The house of the nineteenth century president and poet, out on the road towards the sea, is a small wooden building with a garden and takes half an hour.

Before you go

The heat, and how to plan around it

Cartagena is ten degrees from the equator at sea level and it is hot and humid every day of the year, around 31 degrees with little variation. Between eleven and three, walking around the old town in direct sun is genuinely unpleasant and quite a few visitors underestimate it.

The way locals handle it is simple: be outside early and late, be indoors or under an awning in the middle, drink far more water than you think, and take a hat. The forts have no shade at all.

The wettest months are roughly August to November. December to April is drier, breezier and the high season, with prices to match.

Getting in and getting around

Rafael Nunez airport is inside the city, about ten minutes from the walled town, with flights from across Colombia and direct routes from the United States, Panama and a few European cities. That proximity makes both the arrival afternoon and the departure morning genuinely usable.

Inside the walls, everything is walked. Nothing in the old town is more than fifteen minutes from anything else, and the streets are too narrow for it to be otherwise. Ride-hailing and taxis cover the fortress, La Popa and the beaches for very little; agree the fare with a taxi before getting in, since meters are not used.

The bus terminal is a long way out on the eastern edge, which matters if you are heading to Santa Marta or the north.

The islands, and where to swim

The beaches in the city itself, along the hotel strip at Bocagrande, are grey-sanded and busy and nobody would fly here for them. The good water is out at the Rosario islands and the long white beach on the Baru peninsula, an hour or so away by fast boat or road.

That is a full day, and two nights does not stretch to one. If you want the Caribbean postcard, add a night and give a whole day to it, or better, stay out there overnight when the day boats have gone.

Book through a hotel or a reputable operator rather than at the dock. Day trips vary enormously in quality and the cheap ones spend most of the day moving.

Eating and drinking

The coast eats differently from the rest of Colombia: coconut rice, fried plantain, whole fried fish, and ceviche that owes more to Peru than to anywhere Colombian. Arepa de huevo, a fried corn cake with an egg inside it, is the street food to look for, sold from carts in the morning.

Fruit is everywhere and the women in white dresses with baskets of it on their heads will charge for a photograph, which is a fair enough arrangement as long as you agree the price first.

In the evening, the rooftop and rampart bars are the thing, and they are expensive by Colombian standards and worth one visit. Getsemani, immediately outside the walls, is where the cheaper and livelier version of the same evening happens.

Where to stay, and staying safe

Inside the walls is beautiful, convenient and expensive, in converted colonial houses with courtyards. Getsemani next door is cheaper, younger, noisier and has more life in it after ten at night. Bocagrande, the high-rise strip on the peninsula, is where package tours and Colombian families go and is twenty minutes from the old town.

Cartagena is comfortable and busy at night in the tourist areas, and the nuisances are commercial rather than dangerous: persistent street selling, inflated prices, and taxi fares invented on the spot. Agree everything in advance.

Standard precautions apply after dark on the quieter edges of Getsemani and along the empty stretches of wall. Do not walk on the beach at night.

Cartagena is the easiest city in Colombia to fall for and the easiest to see only from a rooftop bar. The half hour standing where the slave market was, and the church where one priest spent his life on the dock, are what make the rest of it mean anything.

Get up early for the fortress, disappear indoors at noon, and be on the wall by six. That rhythm is the whole trick to this place.

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.

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Common questions

How many days do you need in Cartagena?
Two nights covers the walled city, the fortress and the museums comfortably. Three or four if you want a full day out at the Rosario islands or the beach on Baru, which is what most people come to the coast for.
Is Cartagena safe?
Yes, by Colombian standards and by most others. The old town and Getsemani are busy and comfortable at night. The problems visitors run into are commercial rather than criminal: taxi fares invented on the spot, aggressive street selling, and being charged for a photograph you did not know you were taking. Agree prices first.
When is the best time to visit?
December to April is drier, breezier and busier. August to November is the wet season, with heavy showers rather than all-day rain. The temperature is around 31 degrees whenever you come, so the season matters less than the time of day you choose to be outside.
Where should you stay in Cartagena?
Inside the walls for beauty and convenience at a price, Getsemani for atmosphere and value ten minutes away, or Bocagrande if you want a big hotel and a beach. For two nights, the walled city or Getsemani are the ones that make the plan above work on foot.
Are the beaches any good?
Not in the city. The sand along the hotel strip is grey and crowded. The turquoise water is at the Rosario islands and on the Baru peninsula, an hour out by boat or road, and needs a whole day or an overnight stay to be worth doing.