Colombia's most beautiful town — a hillside Antioquian village of flower balconies, coffee, and one cardinal
Jericó in Antioquia's southwestern coffee mountains is a small town of 12,000 that most Colombians know as the birthplace of Santa Laura Montoya Upegui — Colombia's first person to be canonised, beatified in 2004 and made a saint in 2013 — and that travellers who find it know as possibly the country's most photogenic small town. Built on a hillside at 1,950m, its streets of flower-balconied casas, a basilica visible from kilometres away, and the surrounding coffee fincas and pampas de Jericó (grassy plateaus with panoramic views) create a setting of quiet beauty. The Museo de Arte Religioso h…
Jericó was founded in 1851 during the great Antioquian colonisation — the massive 19th-century migration of people from Antioquia into the western and southern cordilleras to clear forest and plant coffee. The town grew rapidly through the late 19th century as a regional agricultural and commercial hub. Its most famous native, Laura Montoya, was born here in 1874; her canonisation in 2013 made Jericó a pilgrimage site for Colombian Catholics. The town's isolation from main transport routes may explain its unusual preservation.