The city of bridges on the Magdalena — where all of Colombia once passed through, and nobody stops anymore
Honda in Tolima department was once the most important city in New Granada: the entire wealth of the Spanish colonial economy — silver from Potosí, gold from Antioquia, tobacco from the valleys — passed through Honda on the Magdalena River route between the interior and the Caribbean coast. The city's 16 bridges (earning it the nickname 'Ciudad de los Puentes') remain, as do blocks of well-preserved colonial architecture — merchants' houses with interior courtyards, the great market by the river, the church of San Francisco. A three-hour drive from Bogotá but visited by almost no tourists, Ho…
Honda was founded in 1539 and quickly became the key transshipment point on the Magdalena River — the only navigable route from the coast to the Andean interior. Everything came through Honda: missionaries going up, silver coming down, soldiers, slaves, immigrants. Its commercial golden age lasted from the 16th century until the railroad from Bogotá to the coast bypassed the river route in the 1890s, after which Honda declined steadily. The 1805 earthquake damaged the city significantly, but much of the colonial fabric survived.