Cartagena

Settlement around Cartagena Bay dates from about 4000 BC, and the Calamarí village stood on the site when Pedro de Heredia founded the Spanish town on 1 June 1533, naming it after Cartagena in Murcia, home of most of his sailors. The new port, between the Magdalena and Sinú rivers, soon became one of the chief harbours of the Spanish Empire: it shipped silver to Spain and imported enslaved Africans under the asiento system, and from 1610 it was a seat of the Inquisition.

Its wealth drew attackers. Francis Drake took the city in 1586, burned some 200 houses and the cathedral and left only when a ransom was paid, and a French expedition forced its surrender in 1697. The Spanish answered with walls around the centre and, from 1631, around Getsemaní, and forts around the bay, crowned by the Castillo San Felipe de Barajas. In 1741 a large British fleet under Admiral Edward Vernon besieged the city; the defenders under Sebastián de Eslava and Blas de Lezo held, and after a failed assault on San Felipe on 20 April Vernon withdrew.

On 11 November 1811 Cartagena declared itself independent of Spain, pushed by the Getsemaní artisan Pedro Romero. Independence brought decline: without its colonial military funds, and later overtaken by the port of Barranquilla, the city lost people and did not regain its pre-1811 population until the 20th century. In 1984 the walled city and fortress were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and tourism, the port and the petrochemical industry have driven its growth since.

Cartagena's identity is Caribbean and strongly Afro-Colombian. Champeta, a music and dance that originated on the coast in the early 1980s, took shape in Cartagena from chalusonga, a style born in San Basilio de Palenque, the village of escaped slaves inland whose culture UNESCO has recognised. Getsemaní has become a "Ciudad Mural", its walls painted with the stories and characters of the neighbourhood.

The city's Catholic heritage is strong. The Jesuit Peter Claver, who worked among the enslaved Africans landed in the port, is honoured by Colombia's National Day of Human Rights on 9 September and lies in the church that bears his name, and the patron of the city, the Virgin of La Candelaria, is honoured each February with a procession up La Popa hill.

Cartagena is also a city of festivals and spectacle. The film festival, founded in 1959, is the oldest in Latin America; a classical music festival fills the convents and the Teatro Heredia each January; and the national beauty contest, the Concurso Nacional de Belleza, is held in the city, while November's independence celebrations fill the streets. The walled streets have served as a film set for productions from The Mission to Love in the Time of Cholera.

The 2018 census counted about 877,000 people, making Cartagena the fifth-largest city in Colombia and the second on the Caribbean coast after Barranquilla. It is the capital of Bolívar department. Only a small share of the population lives in the walled city, Getsemaní and Bocagrande; most people live in the spreading neighbourhoods inland and along the bay.

The economy rests on three things. The port handles containers, grain and the raw materials of chemical companies along the bay; the petrochemical industry is a major part of the economy; and tourism, from cruise ships to boutique hotels, has grown steadily. Free-trade zones on the mainland and on Barú attract further business.

Days start early to beat the heat and slow in the afternoon. In the evening the old city fills with diners and street musicians, while in the neighbourhoods families sit outside their front doors and music plays from shops and homes. Transcaribe and ordinary buses and taxis carry people to work, and weekends mean the beach at Bocagrande or a boat out to the islands.

Cartagena cooks with the sea, coconut and plantain. The classic plate is fried fish — or chicken or meat — served with arroz de coco, rice cooked with coconut, patacones, flattened slices of fried green plantain, and a little salad. Seafood restaurants in the old city serve ceviche, langoustines, crab and fish, and on the beaches vendors sell seafood and fruit platters.

Street food is fried and filling. The arepa de huevo, a maize arepa fried with an egg sealed inside, is the coastal snack, and carimañolas, cassava fritters stuffed with meat or cheese, and steamed bollos of maize or cassava are sold from carts across the city. Sweets are a local passion: cocadas, baked coconut confections, and other local sweets are sold in the old city.

Mercado de Bazurto, the big market of Cartagena, lies about ten minutes from the centre. To drink there are fresh juices of tropical fruit mixed with water or milk, cold beer and rum, and tinto, sweet black coffee sold by street vendors.