11 landmarks in Centro with verified facts and stories most people walk right past.
Café del Mar Wall Walk
Cartagena City Walls, Centro, Cartagena, Colombia
The walk along the top of Cartagena's colonial walls from Café del Mar south to the Plaza de Santa Teresa is the classic Cartagena sunset experience — a 1.
Clock Tower Gate (Torre del Reloj)
3-13 Calle 35, Centro, Cartagena, 130001, Colombia
The Clock Tower is the main entrance to Cartagena's walled city — a yellow gateway originally built in the 16th century as a simple military entrance and later crowned with the clock tower that has become the symbol of the city.
Convento de San Pedro Claver Courtyard
Calle San Pedro Claver, Centro, Cartagena, Colombia
The courtyard of the San Pedro Claver convent — accessible via a separate ticket from the main church — is one of the most beautiful Baroque cloisters in Colombia, a two-storey arcaded square in cream-coloured coral stone with a central well, carved columns, and a fruit garden that has been preserved from the colonial period.
Iglesia de San Pedro Claver
Calle San Pedro Claver, Centro, Cartagena, Colombia
The church and convent of San Pedro Claver — a Jesuit complex completed in 1654 — is the most important site in Cartagena for the history of the African slave trade.
Las Bóvedas
Calle 34, Centro, Cartagena, Colombia
Las Bóvedas are 23 barrel-vaulted dungeons built into the city walls in 1798 at the northern corner of the walled city — originally military storerooms for gunpowder and munitions, later used as prisons during the 19th-century independence wars, and now converted into artisan craft shops selling hammocks, mochilas (woven bags), Colombian coffee, and the emerald jewellery for which Colombia is famous (the country produces an estimated 55% of the world's emeralds).
Museo del Oro Zenú
Plaza de Bolívar, Centro, Cartagena, Colombia
The Museo del Oro Zenú is Cartagena's branch of Colombia's famous Gold Museum system — a compact museum on Plaza de Bolívar dedicated to the Zenú culture, a pre-Columbian civilisation that inhabited the Colombian Caribbean coast from approximately 200 BC to 1600 AD and produced some of the most sophisticated filigree gold work of pre-colonial America.
Palacio de la Inquisición
Plaza de Bolívar, Centro, Cartagena, Colombia
The Palace of the Inquisition is the most historically significant colonial building in Cartagena — a Baroque palace on Plaza de Bolívar that served as the headquarters of the Spanish Inquisition in New Granada from 1610 to 1821.
Plaza de Bolívar & Cathedral
Plaza de Bolívar, Centro, Cartagena, Colombia
Plaza de Bolívar is the formal heart of Cartagena's old city — a shaded square anchored by a statue of Simón Bolívar (the liberator of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru) and surrounded by the Palace of the Inquisition (now a museum documenting the Spanish Inquisition's activities in Cartagena), the Cathedral, and the colonial buildings that housed the institutions of Spanish colonial power.
Plaza de la Aduana
Plaza de la Aduana, Centro, Cartagena, Colombia
Plaza de la Aduana is the largest and oldest square in Cartagena — a broad trapezoidal plaza used as the main mustering ground of the city since the 16th century, surrounded by the Old Customs House (now the Alcaldía, or city hall), the Palacio Municipal, and the Plaza de los Coches beyond.
San Pedro Claver Church & Museum
3-101 Calle 31, Centro, Cartagena, 130001, Colombia
The Church and Monastery of San Pedro Claver honours the Spanish Jesuit priest who spent 40 years (1615-1654) ministering to enslaved Africans arriving at Cartagena's port — meeting the slave ships, providing food and medicine to the captives, baptising an estimated 300,000 people, and campaigning for the humane treatment of the enslaved in a colony whose economy depended on their labour.
Sunset from Café del Mar
Cartagena City Walls, Centro, Cartagena, Colombia
Café del Mar sits atop the Baluarte de Santo Domingo — a section of the colonial walls overlooking the Caribbean Sea — and provides the most celebrated sunset experience in Cartagena.
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