Manizales

Manizales was founded on 12 October 1849 by a group of twenty Antioquian settlers, the Expedition of the 20, who came from Neira and Salamina during the colonisation of the slopes of the Central Cordillera. The site was a difficult one, a set of narrow ridges and steep slopes in an area prone to earthquakes, but the soil was fertile, and coffee planted on the surrounding hills made the town the commercial centre of what became, in 1905, the department of Caldas.

Coffee shaped its growth. Because the terrain made railways hard to build, a cableway was built to carry coffee over the mountains between Manizales and Mariquita in Tolima, one of the great engineering works of its time in Colombia; its main station, La Camelia, was designed by the New Zealand engineer James Ferguson Lindsay. Fires in 1922, 1925 and 1926 destroyed much of the city, including its old cathedral, and the centre was rebuilt, with the present cathedral completed in 1939. Earthquakes in 1962, when an aftershock brought down one of the cathedral's towers, and 1979 caused further damage.

On 13 November 1985 an eruption of Nevado del Ruiz sent lahars down the mountain that buried the town of Armero in Tolima and killed about 23,000 people in all, including in Chinchiná in Caldas. In the late 20th century many universities were founded in the city. On 10 August 2026 a magnitude 7.4 earthquake centred in Chocó killed six people in Caldas, five of them in Manizales, destroyed at least 1,300 homes in the city and badly damaged one of the cathedral's towers.

Manizales thinks of itself as a city of culture and learning. The Manizales International Theatre Festival, founded in 1968, is one of the major theatre events of Latin America, and the city also holds a jazz festival, an image festival in April and a rock festival in October. Its several universities draw students from across Colombia, and the city has a reputation for having more universities for its size than anywhere else in the country.

The Feria de Manizales in January is the great popular event. Created in the 1950s, it began with bullfights and the 'manolas' parade, a Spanish-style procession; today it also brings parades, concerts, exhibitions and folk music, and it hosts the International Coffee Pageant, held in the city since 1957. The fair is spoken of in Colombia alongside the Barranquilla Carnival.

The city is proud of its architecture: the cathedral, among the tallest churches in Latin America, and buildings of bahareque, wood and cane filled with earth, such as the old station of the coffee cableway. Football means Once Caldas, the club that won the Copa Libertadores in 2004 and plays at the Palogrande stadium. Like the rest of the coffee region, Manizales is paisa in culture — Catholic, enterprising and attached to the memory of its settler founders.

Manizales had an estimated 475,700 people in 2026, and about 588,000 in the wider metropolitan area with Neira, Palestina and Villamaría. The city lies at about 2,150 metres in the basin of the Chinchiná River, in the northern part of the Eje Cafetero, and its main avenues follow the ridges east to west.

Coffee remains at the heart of the economy. The departmental Committee of Coffee Growers, the coffee warehouse company Almacafé and the national coffee research centre Cenicafé are based here, alongside threshers, cooperatives and exporters, and factories make liquor, shoes, chocolate, soap and other goods, though some have shrunk or moved away. Universities, with some 30,000 students, and call centres are now among its main economic activities, and a World Bank study in 2010 ranked Manizales the easiest Colombian city in which to do business.

Daily life is shaped by altitude and rain: cool mornings, frequent showers and fog that sometimes closes the local airport. The August 2026 earthquake damaged more than 4,000 homes in the city, and the planned Coffee Airport at Palestina remains the region's long-awaited answer to its poor air links.

The food of Manizales is the paisa cooking of the coffee region: frijoles, red beans cooked with pork, with rice, ground meat, plantain and the plain white arepa; bandeja paisa for big appetites; and sancocho, a stew of meat with potato, cassava and plantain. The menú del día, a set lunch of soup, main course and juice, is the everyday meal.

Some specialities belong to the mountains around the city. On the road up to Los Nevados, travellers stop for aguapanela con queso, hot water sweetened with panela, unrefined cane sugar, with fresh cheese. Chorizos from nearby Santa Rosa de Cabal, obleas and cheese ice cream are other local favourites.

Coffee is everywhere, from tinto, small cups of sweet black coffee, to single-farm brews from the hills around the city, and visits to coffee farms end with a tasting. In the evenings the Zona Rosa's bars serve beer and aguardiente, the anise spirit of the region.