Colombia (Lonely Planet, 5th Edition) - Jens Porup [40]
Most visitors here gravitate to the cobbled historic center – La Candelaria – where senators lunch at restaurants housed in 300-year-old homes that reinvent themselves as drinks-only venues after hours for the lively (lefty) student scene. Most traditional attractions are here – radiating out from Plaza de Bolívar – and gorgeous Cerro de Monserrate is just east.
It’s a very different scene up north, where you’ll find boutique hotels, safe strolls after dark, and well-heeled locals piling into chic districts like Zona Rosa. The flip side of the city, of course, is the grittier south and southwest. These barrios get a bad rap, and some aren’t altogether safe to visit, but areas like the cheerful Cuadra Picha club zone welcome all.
Then at night Bogotá’s steady flow of drinks will make you light-footed. Try a hot mug of canelazo (aguardiente, sugarcane, cinnamon and lime), which comes sugar-coated and filled with the local spirit. Or indulge in the city’s one great unifier and dunk a chunk of white cheese right into your hot chocolate. Hey, it’s the one thing every bogotano seems to agree on.
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HIGHLIGHTS
Ogle evidence of the country’s El Dorado myths with the glittering displays in the Museo del Oro
Add cheese to your hot chocolate – a Bogotá tradition – in a La Candelaria cafe, such as La Puerta Falsa
Take a Sunday trek, among the pilgrims, up the towering Cerro de Monserrate for a sweeping view of the capital
Ponder all things plump at the (free!) Museo Botero
Hit Bogotá’s club scene – there’s one for everyone: camp drag shows at Vinacure, live coastal-style vallenato shows at Gaira Café or a working-class club ghetto at Cuadra Picha
TELEPHONE CODE: 01
POPULATION: 8 MILLION
ELEVATION: 2574M
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HISTORY
Long before the Spanish Conquest, the Sabana de Bogotá, a fertile highland basin which today has been almost entirely taken over by the city, was inhabited by one of the most advanced pre-Columbian Indian groups, the Muisca. The Spanish era began when Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada and his expedition arrived at the Sabana, founding the town on August 6, 1538 near the Muisca capital, Bacatá.’
The town was named Santa Fe de Bogotá, a combination of the traditional name, Bacatá, and Quesada’s hometown in Spain, Santa Fe. Nonetheless, throughout the colonial period the town was simply referred to as Santa Fe.
At the time of its foundation Santa Fe consisted of 12 huts and a chapel where a mass was held to celebrate the town’s birth. The Muisca religious sites were destroyed and replaced by churches.
During the early years Santa Fe was governed from Santo Domingo (on the island of Hispaniola, the present-day Dominican Republic), but in 1550 it fell under the rule of Lima, the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru and the seat of Spain’s power for the conquered territories of South America. In 1717 Santa Fe was made the capital of the Virreynato de la Nueva Granada, the newly created viceroyalty comprising the territories of present-day Colombia, Panama, Venezuela and Ecuador.
Despite the town’s political importance, its development was hindered by the area’s earthquakes, and also by the smallpox and typhoid epidemics that plagued the region throughout the 17th and 18th centuries.
After independence the Congress of Cúcuta in 1821 shortened the town’s name to Bogotá and decreed it the capital of Gran Colombia. The town developed steadily and by the middle of the 19th century it had 30,000 inhabitants and 30 churches. In 1884 the first tramway began to operate in the city and, soon after, railway lines were constructed to La Dorada and Girardot, giving Bogotá access to the ports on the Río Magdalena.
Rapid progress came only in the 1940s with industrialization and the consequent peasant migrations from the countryside. On April 9, 1948 the popular leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was assassinated, sparking the uprising known as El Bogotazo. The city was partially destroyed; 136 buildings were burnt