Cartagena is a city often called the pearl of the Caribbean Sea. For good reason. The local old town with colonial buildings, cobbled streets, flower-filled balconies and horse-drawn carriages has been entered on the UNESCO list.
The city was one of the first Spanish trading posts and ports in South America. In the nineteenth century, it was also one of the first cities in Colombia to free itself from the Spanish sovereignty. Lovers of books, especially Ibero-American literature, will surely discover the city from the pages of the novel "Love in the Time of the Plague" by Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez.
Cartagena today offers tourists two completely different worlds. The first is the historic heart of the city, Ciudad Amurallada - a beautiful old town from colonial times with baroque churches such as the Church of San Pedro Claver or the Cathedral of St. Catherine of Alexandria, the monastery of Santa Cruz de la Popa, the clock tower, colorful houses with decorated facades and balconies wrapped with flowers. It is here that you can find numerous atmospheric pubs, cafes and souvenir shops. Wandering the cobbled streets and visiting Cartagena, you can reach the Castle of San Felipe de Barajas and the Walls of Cartagena, see the famous clock tower and reach Santo Domingo Square.
The second tourist part of the city is the seaside district of Bocagrande. Here, Cartagena's most important attractions are sandy beaches such as Bocagrande Beach, Castillo Grande Beach and White Beach, as well as a tourist pier and port.
There are also many interesting museums in Cartagena, such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Naval Museum of the Caribbean, the Zenu Gold Museum and the Historical Museum of Cartagena, where you can learn about the history of this city and its relationship with the sea.
