Plaza de Bolívar & Cathedral

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.

The Palace of the Inquisition is the square's most historically charged building — the Inquisition operated in Cartagena from 1610 to 1821, and the museum displays the instruments of torture, the trial records, and the architectural spaces (including the dungeon and the courtyard where sentences were announced) that document one of the darker chapters of colonial history. The building's Baroque portal is considered the finest piece of colonial architecture in Cartagena.

The Cathedral, begun in 1575 and completed in 1612, was partially destroyed by Sir Francis Drake's 1586 attack on Cartagena (Drake demanded a ransom, and the cathedral tower was the first building he targeted) and rebuilt in the 17th century.