Barranquilla

The Spanish chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo described the site in 1533 as a landing place for canoes carrying dried shrimp and salt to trade on the Magdalena, and the Kamash people lived in the area. A permanent settlement grew up around 1629 near the hacienda of San Nicolás de Tolentino, founded by Nicolás de Barros, but unlike Cartagena or Santa Marta Barranquilla was never formally founded by the Spanish. It dates its civic life instead from 7 April 1813, when the independent state of Cartagena granted it the title of villa.

The river made it. Steamships on the Magdalena, introduced in the 1820s, turned it into the exchange point between the interior and the world and a principal port for exporting coffee. The Bolívar Railway of 1869–71 was the first in Colombia; the country's first telephones were installed here in 1885; and the pier at Puerto Colombia, built in 1893, became one of the longest in the world. Immigrants arrived from Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Germany, Italy, the United States, China and Japan, and a Jewish community settled, making it one of Colombia's most cosmopolitan cities. In 1919 SCADTA, the forerunner of Avianca, began commercial flights here, and the city's airport is regarded as the first in South America; works to open the river mouth at Bocas de Ceniza were completed in 1936, with a new maritime terminal.

Barranquilla was one of Colombia's fastest-growing cities until the 1970s, earning the nickname "Golden Gate of Colombia", then fell into economic decline from the 1960s to the early 1980s. It became a special industrial and port district in 1993, hosted the Central American and Caribbean Games in 2018 and opened a new bridge over the Magdalena in 2019.

The Carnival defines the city. Held over the four days before Ash Wednesday, it opens with the Battle of the Flowers and continues with the Great Parade and a festival of orchestras, drawing on traditions that date to the 19th century — costumes, folk dances, songs and parades. Colombia's Congress declared it a national cultural masterpiece, and in 2003 UNESCO proclaimed it a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Its slogan sums up the local attitude: "Quien lo vive, es quien lo goza" — those who live it are those who enjoy it.

Music runs through the year. Cumbia and the other rhythms of the coast are part of everyday life, champeta, which grew up in Cartagena and Palenque, was later taken up by Barranquilla songwriters, and the city's orchestras and its Concert of the Month, held since 1957, keep classical music alive. Commercial radio in Colombia began in Barranquilla in 1929. A sculpture of Shakira was added to one of the city's public spaces in 2007, and Gabriel García Márquez, whose typewriter for his first novel is kept in the Museo Romántico, is remembered in its museums and libraries.

Immigration shaped the city's character: a synagogue and a mosque stand among its churches, and Arab and Jewish families have long been prominent in its commerce. Football is a passion — Junior, founded in 1924 and nicknamed the Sharks, plays at the Metropolitano, and the national team has played many World Cup qualifiers there — and baseball and boxing have been popular since the early 20th century.

The 2018 census counted about 1.2 million people in the city, making it Colombia's fourth-most populous, and more than 2 million live in the metropolitan area, which takes in Soledad, Malambo, Galapa and Puerto Colombia. Barranquilla is a major industrial centre: its factories produce vegetable oils, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, food and drink, building materials, clothing and metal parts, and its river and sea port, the third of the Caribbean coast region, ships coffee, cotton and petroleum alongside manufactured goods.

The city is known for its chaotic urban planning, a legacy of its spontaneous growth as a port. The centre is crowded, noisy and commercial — traffic there can exceed 90 decibels at peak hours — while the north, around El Prado, Alto Prado and Riomar, has the apartment towers and most of the smart restaurants. Air and water pollution from traffic, industry and sewage are recognised problems, and in the rainy seasons sudden street floods, the arroyos, can be deadly in poorly drained neighbourhoods.

Daily routines bend around the heat, with buses, taxis and TransMetro carrying people across the city. Weekends mean the beaches north-west along the Atlántico coast, and football at the Metropolitano.

Barranquilla eats like the rest of the coast, with a few dishes of its own. Arroz con coco, rice cooked in coconut milk, comes with fried fish — often bocachico from the Magdalena — and patacones, flattened fried green plantain. Sancocho, a thick soup of meat or fish with root vegetables, is the weekend dish, and sancocho de guandul, made with pigeon peas and meat, is a local favourite. From neighbouring Soledad come butifarras soledeñas, small round sausages.

Fritos — fried snacks — are the everyday food of the street: arepas, empanadas, arepas de huevo with an egg sealed inside, and carimañolas of cassava stuffed with meat or cheese. Bollos, maize or cassava dough steamed in leaves, are sold everywhere. The seafood restaurants by the river at Las Flores, near Bocas de Ceniza, serve fish straight from the water, and the market streets of the centre sell fruit, vegetables and fish.

The city's immigrant history shows on its menus. Lebanese and other Arab restaurants are part of the local scene, and the smart restaurants around Carrera 53 and Washington Park range from Colombian to international cooking. Cold beer, rum and fresh fruit juices are the drinks of the heat.