The most beautiful walled colonial city in the Americas — García Márquez country, fried fish on the Getsemaní walls, and Caribbean heat in every colour
Cartagena de Indias is a fortified colonial city on Colombia's Caribbean coast — the most completely preserved Spanish colonial fortification system in the Americas (UNESCO), with 11km of walls encircling a city of pastel townhouses, bougainvillea-draped balconies, and 16th–17th-century churches. The old city is divided between the Ciudad Amurallada (the walled city proper) and the adjacent Getsemaní neighbourhood — a working-class barrio of street art, Caribbean music, and restaurants that has become one of the most vibrant food and nightlife neighbourhoods in the Americas without losing its…
Cartagena de Indias was founded in 1533 and became the primary transshipment port for Spanish silver from the New World — the treasure fleet that carried Peruvian silver back to Spain stopped here before the Atlantic crossing, making it the most valuable port in the Americas and a constant target of pirates and privateers. Francis Drake sacked and burned the city in 1586; English Admiral Edward Vernon attacked (and failed to take) it in the 1741 siege with 186 ships and 23,000 men — the largest seaborne invasion of the Americas before D-Day. The fort system (Castillo San Felipe de Barajas, Fu…