Colombia's most beautiful colonial village, perched above the Chicamocha canyon
Barichara is a colonial hilltop village in the Santander department of Colombia, often called the country's most beautiful pueblo. Its streets are paved with irregular honey-toned stone, its whitewashed houses have broad red-tile eaves and window boxes of bougainvillea, and its setting on the canyon rim gives views across a 2,000-metre drop to the Chicamocha River below. The population is just 8,000; there is a single central square, a cathedral that took a century to build, and the 6km stone-paved Camino Real — a pilgrimage path that drops to the even smaller village of Guane. Strict heritag…
Barichara was founded in 1705 by a Spanish colonial administrator on the site of a Guane indigenous community. Its name in the Guane language means 'good place to rest.' The town was declared a National Monument of Colombia in 1978 for its exceptional integrity of colonial urban fabric — every building must use the local yellow sandstone and the red clay tiles that give the village its distinctive warm palette. The Colombian national poet Aquileo Parra was born here in 1825, and the town has maintained an artistic community ever since.