Colombia's coffee cathedral city — where Manizales sits at 2,150 metres on an Andean ridge in the Eje Cafetero (Coffee Cultural Landscape, UNESCO World Heritage 2011) and the Catedral Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Manizales (104 metres high, one of the tallest religious buildings in the Americas, built in concrete Gothic style because the original building was destroyed by fire and earthquake and the surrounding region is too seismically active for traditional brick or stone construction) dominates every view of the city, the Nevados National Natural Park (Los Nevados — three active snow-capped volcanoes including Nevado del Ruiz at 5,321 metres) is accessible in 2 hours from the city centre, and Manizales' annual Feria de Manizales (January) is Colombia's most important cultural and equestrian festival after Medellín's Feria de las Flores
Manizales (440,000 city; 550,000 metro) is the capital of Caldas Department in Colombia's Coffee Cultural Landscape (Eje Cafetero) — a UNESCO World Heritage region of 47 municipalities where coffee has been grown continuously since the 1840s colonization of the central Andes by Antioquian settlers (colonización antioqueña). Manizales sits at 2,150 metres on a narrow east-west ridge of the Central Andes and is the highest of Colombia's three main Coffee Region cities.
Manizales was founded on October 12, 1849 by a group of Antioquian families as part of the colonización antioqueña — the 19th-century expansion of Antioquian settlers southward through the Colombian Andes in search of new agricultural land, primarily for coffee cultivation. The city's position at 2,150 metres on a narrow Andean ridge was chosen because the surrounding slopes were ideal for coffee farming, though the location made construction difficult and earthquake risk high. Manizales has been destroyed by earthquakes multiple times, and the Cathedral alone has been rebuilt three times — t…